The Tomato Art

Harvesting Sunlight
by Jim Duncan with art by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen, courtesy of Moberg Gallery

“Food is normally the last thing on my mind after working all day in the kitchen,” says Le Jardin chef Tag Grandgeorge, “but I can’t think of anything better than walking around a farmers market stand and popping one of those green zebras in my mouth,” he continued, regarding a particularly sweet striped tomato.

Grandgeorge has thought hard on the subject, too. Each August he prepares a five course dinner featuring Khanh Hamiltons’ heirloom tomatoes in every course. Among the delicacies in years past: a warm white balsamic tomato vinaigrette on white fish; a black pepper ice cream with caramelized tomato slices and basil syrup; a green tomato and raspberry cobbler, with a coulis of Sweet 100 tomatoes.

Such culinary works of art inspire literal works of art too. At least three Iowa artists, Bill Luchsinger, Karen Strohbeen and Heyoung McBride, have used the Hamiltons’ heirlooms as models. Science can explain the fascination for artists.

Different carotenoids give such fruits their red, yellow and orange colors. In photosynthesis, they trap certain waves of sunlight and funnel their energy into the chlorophyll system. In this sense, different colored tomatoes are packed with different waves of sunlight. Artists can’t look directly at the sun but tomatoes can and artists can look inside tomatoes.
“They’re translucent, not just reflected light. They reflect and glow. They have that magic at the surface,” Luchsinger explains more artistically.

“Like a jewel,” adds Strohbeen.

We call them heirlooms for good reason. The Hamilton’s garden, Sunstead Farm, is a veritable jewelry store, showcasing the fruits of seeds from every continent on earth, sometimes within just one vegetable species. It’s a labor of love for the Hamiltons who came together themselves like windblown seeds . Khanh was displaced from the tea and coffee plantation of her youth by the Vietnamese Diaspora. She lived all over the world before circumstances brought her to Des Moines, and Neil kept her here. Neil left the family farm in Taylor County decades ago, but part of Taylor County stayed with him.

When first married, the Hamilton’s lived in a townhouse in Des Moines where Neil directs Drake’s Agriculture Law Center. While living in the city, they gardened on some friends’ farms. Then in 1997, they bought Sunstead’s ten acres near Waukee and began growing heirloom vegetables. At first they sold them to Des Moines area restaurants Café Su and the Des Moines Art Center Café. When they began selling at the Ingersoll Farmers’ market in 2001, the quality and the colors of their heirlooms attracted more professional chefs around Des Moines. So what keeps a couple of busy professionals, Khanh is also a designer, working the land and hawking their harvest on the urban roadside? Neil says they are in it for the colors.

“With tomatoes, the range of colors is the reason for working with heirlooms, same as with eggplants and beets. The full array of color is exciting and people respond to that,” he explains.

Khanh responds to the way heirloom beets (chioggia, golden, bull’s blood), eggplants and tomatoes are constant and grounded. “Their colors stay. Purple beans turn green when you cook them, so what’s the point? With these heirlooms, the colors stay.”

The Ironic History of the Love Apple

The great variety of the Hamilton’s heirloom tomatoes survived a history of misunderstanding. Ben Franklin didn’t think tomatoes were safe to eat, while less open-minded Colonial Americans thought they were poisonous, and even evil. The tomato did not become a popular food in Northern Europe, England or Anglo-Saxon America until the 20th century.

Coincidentally or not, this is also when tomato ketchup and tomato soup in tin cans and caught on in England and America. In appreciation of the tomato, northern Europe and North America were centuries behind Spain and Italy, and millennia behind Central and South America.

The tomato developed first in Mexico as a corn field weed, but was soon cultivated as a food. By 3500 BC, it was part of the native diet and by the time Cortez came to Mexico, the Aztecs were using tomatoes at all stages of growth. Immature fruits were sliced into salads and ripe plants were cooked with chilies into sauce for beans.

We stereotype the ripe tomato as red and round today, but the varieties that first came to Europe were surely yellow or orange, for they were called “golden apples” (pomodoro). The French name “love apple” (pomme d’amour) was either a corruption of that Spanish word, or of the Italian pomme di moro (“apple of the Moor“).

The Spanish, better informed about tomato sources, began calling them tomate, after the Nuhuatl word tomatl. Even in the late 19th century, northern Europeans wrote that the tomato was totally without nutrition and a cause of gout.

Khanh’s Gardening Tips

Start your seeds in March. Bring them indoors and outdoors regularly in April, this keeps them from getting spindly. When you first put them out in May, set them under a cloth at night.

Deer eat tomatoes in the city, but not in the country where they can find better things. They will eat Swiss chard, beet greens and lettuce anywhere, so chicken wire might be the only way to keep them out. (Some other gardeners believe that a spray of egg whites and water will repel deer).

Beyond Big Boy

Red, round tomatoes are one of the great things about summer in Iowa, but there are splendid minorities in the myriad family of tomato. Here are a few splendid species that break through the red and round stereotype.

Yellow/Orange

Basinga. Heart-shaped fruits have a mild flavor and red blush on blossom end.
Beam’s Year Pear. Prolific supplier of 1 ½ “ pear tomatoes is best for salads and can bear fruit as fast as 70 days from transplant.

Czech’s Excellent Yellow. One of the strongest flavored yellows, these 3 inch fruits grow quickly.

Dr. Wyche’s Yellow. Big full pound tomatoes have lots of meat and orange flesh.

Gold Medal. Yellow with red streaks, these sweet tomatoes are almost acid free.

Golden Sunray. These slow growing fruits are remarkably consistent in size and shape, and blemish free.

Marizol Gold. This heirloom came from Germany’s Black Forest in the 17th century and produces red marbled meat with flat ribs.

Moonglow. These solid orange sweethearts have very few seeds and deep flavor.
Nebraska Wedding. Beautiful orange skinned and fleshed fruits come in clusters and are very slow to mature.

Orange Banana. The name says it all, banana shaped and orange in color, these are best for sauces.

Plum Yellow. From Russia, these look extraordinarily like lemons, but taste sweet.

Roman Candles. These have very smooth skins and are banana shaped.

Russian Persimmon. Mild flavored fruits are 3-4”s in diameter.

Wapsipinicon Peach. These prolific, certified organic 2” fruits from northeast Iowa have fuzzy skin and sweet flavors.

White Beauties. Flat bottomed heirlooms have the most acidulous flavor of all yellows.

Green Flesh

Aunt Ruby’s German Green. Huge beefsteak fruits, over a pound each, are sweet with a spicy flavor.

Black Sea Man. Red centered fruits have odd veins resembling a skeleton.

Green Zebra. Sweet zingy flavored fruits have green and yellow stripes.

Tasty Evergreen. Skin ripens to yellow-brown, but flesh remains green, with strong, sweet flavor.

Red

Black Krim. From the Black Sea, these greenish-black shouldered fruits can turn almost totally black with enough sun and heat.

Black from Tula. An ugly Russian that some gourmets think is the most delicious of all tomatoes.

Cherokee Purples. With the color of a dusty rose, these taste a bit smoky.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian Pink. Deep red and full shouldered, these prolific plants have full flavors.

Dad’s Mug. Mug shaped with pink fruits, these have few seeds and mild flavor.

Federle. These 7 inch long paste fruits resemble peppers in appearance, but have more full flavor than other banana shaped tomatoes.

Grandpa’s Cock’s Plume. Heart shaped fruits from Siberia have few seeds and weigh up to a pound.

Hillbilly Potato Leaf. A heavy bearing plant, these produce red fruits that are streaked with gold.

Long Tom’s. These fruits average 5 “ in length and 2 “ in diameter, with very few seeds and sweet flavors.

Red Cup. These hollow tomatoes are good for stuffing.

Russian Black. Baseball sized fruits have charcoal-red flesh and full flavor.

Soldacki. These came from Poland in 19th century and bear large dense fruits of pinkish red.

Striped Cavern. These hollow fruits have thick, yellow-striped walls and keep as long as a month even when harvested ripe.

Tiger Tom. Gold stripes and tart flavors make this tomato a frequent winner of taste tests.

Recipes

Tag Grandgeorge’s Green Tomato Cobbler with vanilla ice cream

For the filling:

1 ½ lbs firm green tomatoes, cored and finely chopped
2 cups sugar
1 lemon scrubbed, sectioned into 8 pieces and seeded
For the topping:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¾ stick cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
And vanilla ice cream as accompaniment

Method:

Spread half of tomatoes in bottom of large saucepan and cover with 2/3 cup of sugar and lemon and another 2/3 cup sugar. Layer the rest of tomatoes on top and cover with sugar. Let stand without stirring until most of sugar has dissolved, about one hour.

In a mixing bowl combine the flour, ½ cup sugar, baking powder, and the salt. Blend in the butter until mixture resembles course meal. Add ¼ cup boiling water and stir mixture until it just forms a dough.

Preheat over to 400 degrees.

Stir tomatoes and bring to boil over moderately high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally for 30 minutes. Fish out lemon wedges and discard.

Transfer mixture to a 10 inch cast-iron skillet, increase heat and slowly bring mixture back to boil. Drop spoonfuls of the dough carefully on the boiling mixture.

Random placement and overlap are acceptable but do not completely cover mixture. Transfer skillet on to foil lined baking sheet and bake in middle of oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until topping is golden. Cool slightly and serve warm with ice cream. Fresh rinsed white and red raspberries make a nice garnish.

Sweet Taste of Freedom

How Beetroot Changed the World

When Madison County gardener Bill Luchsinger was recovering from surgery last year, his partner Karen Strohbeen was trying to coax his appetite back with various favorite foods.

“We tried everything, baking and braising, raw and seared. Nothing was working. Then we tried beets,” said Strohbeen.

“There was this dark red earthy attraction. For awhile then I ate beets every meal. There’s nothing more elemental,” recalled Luchsinger.

"Beets" by Bill Luchsinger

Since Neolithic times the blood red beet has represented basic life forces as elemental as healing, sex and freedom. Today’s beets derived from a wild species that was widely used medicinally. Ancient Romans began cultivating beetroot as a food crop and a sexual stimulant. In the Middle Ages, beets became important to survival because they couldn’t be burned by marauding armies like most crops. After the discovery that they produced a sweetener comparable to cane sugar, beets, more than anything else, accelerated the end of legalized slavery.

Today beetroot is still championed as an elemental pancea - quite controversially in one case. South African Health Minister Manto Tshaabalala-Msimang, known as “Dr. Beetroot,” recommended beets for treatment of AIDS, in lieu of anti-retroviral medicines. That’s not the only way beets are misunderstood. Beet greens are off the charts in their concentrations of vitamins K, A and C and in magnesium. They also are quite rich in manganese, potassium, iron, vitamin E and dietary fiber and they have shown demonstrable results in preventing colon cancer and maintaining kidney health in diabetes patients. Yet, this healthiest part of the beet is often thrown away today.

“I don’t understand why people would throw away the greens, they are the best part,” explained Dallas County gardener Khanh Hamilton, whose Sunstead Farm supplies some of greater Des Moines’ best restaurants with heirloom fruits and vegetables. Hamilton thinks beets have an overall acceptance problem in Iowa because of their history here as a survival food.

“They got people through winter. So many people here only know them as pickled beets. They don’t like pickled beets, so they think they don’t like beets at all. Many don’t even know you can eat the leaves, or the root before it‘s been pickled,” she said.

Ironically, that’s the same reason that Seed Savers Exchange founder and director Diane Ott Whealy thinks beets will be the next hot thing, along with other root vegetables, in heirloom foods.

“I think the next area of rediscovery will be root vegetables - carrots, turnips, beets, even parsnips. People are starting to look more toward root cellar foods in order to take more control over their food supplies,” she said.

Brief Bloody History

Excavated in Neolithic camp sites, wild beets are native to most of Eurasia from Britain to India. Ancient Greeks distinguished beet types based on color and Pliny was the first to leave a culinary, as well as medicinal, record of them. Romans became serious about them as a crop and distinguished types based on seasons. The growing of beets became an agricultural science in 13th century Muslim Spain.

When the British blockaded France during the Napoleonic War, sugar-crazed French society pressured Napoleon into offering huge financial incentives for a cane sugar substitute. That led quickly to the development of economical methods for extracting sucrose from beets, the world‘s sweetest vegetable. By 1818 France was producing nine million pounds of pure crystal sugar from beets annually. Because sugarcane cultivation employed ninety per cent of all African slaves, beet sugar manufacturers began advertising “Slave-free sugar” and winning market share. Sugar beet farming and processing grew all over Europe.

In 1834, slaves were freed in the British Commonwealth. France, Denmark and Holland followed Britain’s lead before the American Civil War.

Since then, white beets have generally been grown to extract sugar and colored beets for eating and pickling. After World War II, one variety of beet dominated American supermarkets - the Red Ace. In the 21st century, heirloom varieties have become increasingly popular.

Khanh’s Growing Tips

Beets are a not-so-hardy perennial that are grown as an annual in Iowa’s climate. Hamilton says the best time to plant is early Spring.

“Then you will have them Spring and Summer and Fall. I always have them at Thanksgiving and sometimes even later. They are happy until temperatures get down below the 20’s. But you can plant as late as early Fall, and you will have them in November. The yellow ones grow slower. The white ones don’t grow as well as the red, yellow or pink ones.

"And the white ones tend to get woody, the others don’t do that. The upside though is that they have no color, so no mess to worry about. They can become sweeter too sometimes but only in hot weather. In the colder weather of Spring and Fall, the red and Chioggia beets get much sweeter, the gold ones a bit more so, the white ones just get more bitter,” Hamilton advised.

Hamilton gardens naturally so bugs are her biggest pest.
“Bugs have to be hand killed. the Asian beetle is the worst. I still have bad dreams about them,” she said.

Beet seeds are actually a cluster of seeds and will produce more than one plant. Spacing is flexible, but 2"- 4" between seeds is ideal. Beets are sensitive to soil acidity and a low soil pH stunts growth. Beets prefer 6.2 - 6.8 pH but will tolerate 6.0 to 7.5. Loose, well-drained, sandy loam soils rich in organic matter are ideal. Stones and debris hinder growth. If you have heavy soil, amend it well with compost prior to planting. Break up large clods and rake smooth prior to planting.

Eating

Beet greens are handled like other greens - boiled or steamed as a hot vegetable or served cold after cooking as a salad with oil and vinegar or lemon juice. Beetroot can be served hot or cold, pickled, roasted, juiced, deep fried, pulverized or even raw. Peeled and steamed, boiled or baked, it can be eaten warm with butter or olive oil. Cooked and pickled, it can be served cold as a condiment. Peeled and shredded raw, it can be eaten in a salad.

In Australia and New Zealand, pickled beetroot is a condiment for burgers. Classic Lebanese and Turkish cuisine usually features beets with yogurt. In Eastern Europe, beets are most popular as soup.

Hamilton says you should cut the stems an inch or two from the root and eat the greens as soon as possible. The root stores twice as long after the leaves have been cut, up to six months at 34 degrees. After washing the roots and wrapping them individually, skin on, in aluminum foil, you can bake them like a potato. Roast them in a 375 degrees oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until a knife glides easily in and out through the foil. Forty five minutes of baking is equal to 30 minutes of boiling. If properly baked or boiled, the skin will slide right off and you'll be left with colorful flesh firm enough to slice with a knife yet soft enough to eat like a peach.

Beets’ versatility makes them popular with creative chefs. Beetroot’s sweetness counters acidity in foods like oranges. Its earthy flavor balances the sharpness of pungent blue cheeses. Its color transforms foods - beets are usually used to makes lemonade pink. Hamilton thinks the elemental taste of beets is best served simply - with a generous drizzle of your best olive oil, a tiny pinch of sea salt and pepper “plus a little something to kick up the acidity, like vinegar or lemon juice.”

Khanh’s Beets

4-6 each of Chioggia, Golden, Albino White and Detroit Dark Red
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon black ground pepper

Trim off the green tops one inch from root and place beets in a large pot, covered in water. Boil and reduce to simmer. Cook covered for 30 minutes until beets are just tender. Drain and allow to cool in order to handle.

Peel beets and cut into one inch pieces. Place in mixing bowl and whisk together vinegar, oil and pepper. Salt to taste.

Pour over the beets. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated.
Tom Nieland’ s “Vanya” Borsch

After thirteen year old Tom Nieland moved to Iowa, he remembered watching his grandmother make borsch in Russia.

“I saw my grandma make borsch but I did not help her I just watched her make it. I memorized this recipe so I can make the borsch on my own,” he said.

Nieland makes it frequently in Iowa, with foods he grows, because his adoptive family likes it so much. His mother encouraged him to enter it in the Iowa State Fair’s International Cooking contest where it won the overall blue ribbon.

4.5 cups cabbage, chopped

4.5 cups beets, chopped

7 cups potatoes, chopped

2 Tablespoon oil

1 big onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, pressedone fourth cup chopped

fresh dill one fourth cup chives, chopped

3 or 4 cubes vegetable bullion

1 teaspoon salt (optional)

2 bay leaves

18 cups water

Garnish

sour cream
more dill
salt and pepper to taste

Boil water in a big pot. While water is boiling, cook onions and garlic in oil in a pan for 8 minutes, or until golden brown. Add potatoes to the big pot and cook 15 minutes. Scrape off foam. Add beets and cabbage. Cook 15 minutes. Add onions and garlic, bay, salt and bullion and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add dill at the end. Let sit 5 minutes. Serve with garnishes.

Varieties

There are two main garden varieties of beta vulgaris grown in Iowa: chard (beta vulgaris - cicla), grown for leaves instead of roots; and beetroot (beta vulgaris - vulgaris), for roots as well as leaves.

Hal Jasa of Phat Chef's serves pickled beets with wasabi

As many names suggest, chard cultivars are bred for beauty as much as yield or taste - Burbank’s Rainbow, Crimson Giant, White Ribbed, Neon Lights, Rainbow, Ruby Red, Silverado and Silver Beet Five Color. Large White Ribbed and Lucullus are prime candidates to become the first food grown in outer space because they are the highest yielding plants requiring the least amount of vertical space. The Italian heirloom Argentata is prized by chefs for its mild sweet flavor. Fordhook Giant works well in Iowa summer because of its heat resistance.

Popular cultivars of beetroot include:

Albina Vereduna - a white variety

Albino - completely white roots

Bull's Blood - dark leaves and sweet roots. Its juice makes red food coloring

Burpee's Golden - globe-shaped orange roots turn yellow when cooked and don’t bleed

Chioggia - from Venice, their unique flesh has alternating red and white concentric rings

Cylindra - carrot-shaped with dark-red flesh; sweet and easy to peel

Detroit Dark Red - the American standard beet came from Canada; Low in geosmin, which gives beets their earthy taste; good yields and good for storage

India Beet - not as sweet as Western beets

Lutz Green Leaf - red roots and green leaves, it’s the best beet for maintaining quality in storage

Red Ace - the principal variety found in supermarkets

Popular baby beet cultivar’s include Pronto, Kestrel and Baby Ball.

Seed Companies

Burpee & Company
http://www.burpee.com/, 800-8881447

Johnny’s Selected Seeds
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/
207-437-4357

Seed Savers Exchange
http://www.seedsavers.org/
563-382-5990

Gourmet Seed International
http://www.gourmetseed.com/
575-398-6111

Thompson & Morgan
http://www.tmseeds.com/
800-274-7333

Renee’s Garden
http://www.reneesgarden.com/
888-880-7228