Football Spain.
Tomatoes – Latvia!

"A world without field tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins”

They Pomodoro is a much more onomatopoeic word than tomato for the flavour of being in love in the sun.

If there is one time of the year that I find thrilling, it’s now, the time of the first field tomatoes. I’m talking about “real” tomatoes, not "factory" tomatoes - the ones that bounce when you drop them. The last tomato I ate was about 9 months ago – I’ve waited a long time to have my next one! Picking and eating my first tomato of the season, is one of summers exiting treats. Plump, ripe and warm from the sun, the moment you bite into it, a juicy explosion of flavours will convince you that nothing beats growing your own.

With the possible exception of the apple, there is no food crop in the world more evocative, more capable of stirring passions and memories than the tomato. Tomatoes, ripened on the vine in full sun, are the most delicious tomatoes of all. People long for more natural beauty, more flavour, and better nutrition on their dinner plates. Yet tomatoes are dominated by commercial breeds, hybrids. These tomatoes are grown in high plant densities and harvested mechanically. Hybrids reduce biodiversity and prevent farmers and gardeners from saving harvested seed to regrow.

It is a very rare sight to find a field tomato in a supermarket shelf, and also in Central market, merchants claim to call tomatoes form Lithuania and Poland – local. And beware, if you see the sign in the supermarket stating ‘Vine tomatoes’, it’s a con job. Where else would you grow a tomato, in a palm tree?

Therefore you have to go to the Slow Food and Farmers market at Berga Bazārs to be guaranteed that it is the real McCoy or buy direct from the farmer. And Tomatoes in all their historical glory, offer over 5000 cultivated varieties. I think that that beats the number of grape varieties and see how seriously we take our wine. We may not have quite that many here at Vincents, but already in my garden at Baltezers I have the Yellow Par, Wild Sweetie, Gezahnte, Victory, Burbank, Purple Smudge, Early Sunrise, King Humbert and Schimmeig.

Vincents tomatoes come from 6 farmers, Sarmīte, Imants, Anna, Laima, Valentine and Ināra.

Staring this week, on my menu I want you to try the tomato carpaccio, it is fantastic! Here’s a warning, if we don’t support the local farmer, or grow our own tomatoes, the tomato will go the way of the dodo and dinosaur. It will become extinct and we will all be eating tomatoes grown in plastic bags and artificial media combined with drip irrigation and then treated with ethylene. Sounds like being in intensive care in hospital.

On my visit to Israel a few months ago I met many chefs who treat the tomato with so much respect; it is life’s elixir because the pure tomato comes from the sun. Tomatoes from a vine that grow as dense as a hedge, with fruit the size of inflamed bull’s testicles: thick and fleshy with barely a seed, and that miraculous gift of tomatoes ( as far as I know, not present in bull’s testicles) – intense sweetness.
Here is a fantastic tomato sauce from the kitchen of Janna Gur

Spanish might be the best in football but not in growing tomatoes, so the best way to continue celebration or recover after it is enjoying Latvian tomato Bloody Mary here at Vincents. Originally it was conducted for hangover so every self loving European needs it today.

Bloody Mary recipe courtesy of the New York School of Bartending:

• 1 oz. to 1½ oz. (30-45 ml) vodka in a Highball glass filled with ice.
• Fill glass with tomato juice
• 1 dash celery salt
• 1 dash ground black pepper
• 1 dash Tabasco
• 2-4 dashes of Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce
• 1/8 tsp. horseradish (pure, never creamed)
• Dash of lemon or lime juice

May be shaken vigorously or stirred lazily, as desired. Garnish with a celery stalk; a skewer of olives, pickles, carrots, mushrooms, or other vegetables; or even meat or fish (salami, shrimp, etc.) and cheese. Occasionally, pickled asparagus spears or pickled beans are also used.
“I initiated the Bloody Mary of today,” he told us. “Jessel said he created it, but it was really nothing but vodka and tomato juice when I took it over. I cover the bottom of the shaker with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper, and a layer of Worcestershire sauce; I then add a dash of lemon juice and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice, shake, strain, and pour. We serve a hundred to a hundred and fifty Bloody Marys a day here in the King Cole Room and in the other restaurants and the banquet rooms.”

Restaurant VINCENTS
Chef Mārtiņš Rītiņš