"Golden Apple" Or Tomato

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

It is botanists and customs officials who look at tomatoes from different angles: for botanists, a tomato is a berry, for US customs officials, a vegetable, and for European customs officials, a fruit. Because of this discord, tomato crossing the borders of different states costs their owners differently. Summer residents grow tomatoes for their own consumption and classify them as vegetables

Golden Apple

There is a very clear explanation for the fact that the European customs considers tomatoes to be a fruit. When people from South America - tomatoes, came to Italy, for their external resemblance to an apple and their golden yellow color, they received a new name - "Pomo d'oro", which means "golden apple". So, with the light hand of the Italians, tomatoes began to be called tomatoes.

Long way to our stomach

Many cultivated plants have traveled a long way to make their way into our kitchens and become our favorite dishes. Tomatoes are no exception. After the conquest of American lands with European pluck-heads, Europe learned about many plants that were curiosities, and therefore were not immediately invited "to the table."

Tomatoes were grown in gardens, as an ornamental plant, and sometimes as a medicinal plant, referring it to poisonous, and therefore not fit for food. So, "edible" European tomatoes are only two hundred years old.

Medicinal properties of tomatoes

Since those legendary times, when tomatoes were classified as poisonous plants, people were able to discern in their ripe fruits many valuable substances necessary for the human body.

Mineral salts, contained in a large variety of tomatoes, support normal metabolism in the body. Being a multivitamin vegetable, tomato replenishes the lack of vitamins, maintains the proper level of vision, takes care of the condition of the skin, and has a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system.

Nutritional value of tomatoes

Every Russian knows about the taste and nutritional qualities of tomato fruits, even if he himself has not grown a single tomato in his entire life. A couple of medium sized tomatoes with a piece of bread, plus a pinch of salt or sugar, whatever you like, will replace a full meal, giving you the daily need for vitamins.

The widespread use of tomatoes in our diet raises the question: "How did people previously live without this appetizing, tasty and healthy vegetable?"

Tomatoes are eaten fresh, without any seasonings, and if you add a little greenery to them, you get an arch-vitamin salad. Tomatoes are added to the vinaigrette; grind into paste and mashed potatoes; squeeze out the most useful juice.

You can't cook real borsch without a tomato; they are added to soups, pickles, in a variety of second courses. They are stuffed with all kinds of fillings.

Tomatoes are harvested for future use. To do this, they are pickled, salted, dried.

Dried Tomatoes

Even the Aztecs and Italians, living in mild climates, to enjoy tomatoes all year round, dried them in the sun, laying them out on the roofs of houses. How relevant this topic sounds for areas with a cold climate or territories of the Far North.

Fully ripe fruits were taken for drying. To obtain better quality products, tomatoes were treated with salt or sulfur dioxide, and then kept in the sun for four to ten days. Tomatoes lose 88 to 93 percent of their weight during the drying process. This must be taken into account if you want to stock up on a certain amount of dry tomatoes for the winter. Today, if you have a drying technique, you can do without the sun's rays.

Dried tomatoes retain all their useful qualities and are suitable for preparing any dishes that are cooked with fresh tomatoes in the summer, including mashed potatoes and pasta.

From dried tomatoes, you can prepare an original seasoning for main courses based on olive oil, adding garlic, dry paprika, basil, rosemary to them.