RENDER

TOMATOESA guide to

Where art & appetite converge

Photography by Darya Kalantari

“Three tomatoes are walking down the street - a papa tomato, a mama tomato and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Papa tomato get angry,

goes over to Baby tomato and squishes him.....and says ‘Ketchup!’”

Uma Thurman in ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)

To my mom, who made me eat my veggies.To Aja, who underappreciates tomatoes.To Michael, who let me do whatever the hell I wanted to do.To my roommates at #20, who let me take over the kitchen with tomatoes.And to anyone who takes even a minute to look at this.Thank you.

Table Of Contents

1. General Information2. Geographic History3. Etymology4. The Classic Argument5. Types6. Tomato Sandwich Recipe7. Sources

General Information

Tomatoes are a plant of the nightshade family (Solana-ceae). Their plants are generally branched, spreading

60–180 cm (24–72 inches) and recumbent when fruiting, but a few forms are compact and upright. Leaves are more or less hairy, strongly odorous, innately compound, and grow up to 45 cm long. The flowers are yellow, 2 cm across, pen-dant, and clustered. Fruits vary in diameter from 1.5 to 7.5 cm or more and are usually red, scarlet, or yellow; they vary in shape from almost spherical through oval and elongate to pear-shaped. The fruit is a soft, succulent berry, containing two to many cells of small seeds surrounded by jellylike pulp. Most of the tomato’s vitamin C is found in this pulp. The to-mato is used raw in salads, served as a cooked vegetable, used as an ingredient of various prepared dishes, and pick-led.

Geographic History

The wild species originated in the Andean area of South America, mainly in Peru and Ecuador. It is thought to

have been domesticated in Mexico long before the arrival of Europeans.

The tomato was introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the early 16th century as part of the Colombian Exchange. The Spanish and Italians seem to have been the first peoples to adopt it as a food; it has remained a staple of Italian cuisine. In France and northern Europe the tomato was at first grown as an ornamental plant. Since botanists recognized it as a relative of the poisons belladonna and deadly nightshade, it was regarded with suspicion as a food.

Tomatoes were introduced to North America from Europe; Thomas Jefferson is known to have raised them at Monticel-lo in 1781. The tomato was used for Creole cooking in Lou-isiana as early as 1812; it was not used for cooking in the northeastern states until about 1835. It was mostly shunned throughout the United States united after the Civil War, and even then it was stil l boiled for a minimum of 3 hours as a precaution as it was stil l thought to be poisonous unless cooked. Widespread popularity was not obtained in the United States until the early 20th century.

By the late 20th century the Unit-ed States was the world’s leading pro-ducer of tomatoes. Currently the top producer of tomatoes is China, who contributes 10% of the global produc-tions. Southern European countries,

particularly Italy, are also major producers. Since the plant re-quires relatively warm weather and much sunlight, in northern Europe and Great Britain it is grown chiefly in hothouses. A large percentage of the world’s tomato crop is used for processing; products include canned tomatoes, tomato juice, ketchup, pu-ree, paste, and “sun-dried” tomatoes or dehydrated pulp.

Etymology

The word “tomato” is derived from the Náhuatl (Aztec) word tomatl. The Italians called the tomato pomodoro

(“golden apple”), which has given rise to speculation that the first tomatoes known to Europeans were yellow. The French called it pomme d’amour (“love apple”) because it was thought to have aphrodisiacal properties. However, some scholars assert that the tomato was at first taken by the French to be a kind of eggplant, of which it is a close relative. The egg-plant was called pomme des Mours (“apple of the Moors”) because it was a favorite vegetable of the Arabs; pomodoro and pomme d’amour may be corruptions of this name.

The tomato’s scientific name has long been debated. It was first referred to as Solanum lycopersicon 1753 by botanist Linnaeus. It was then changed in 1986 to Lycopersicon es-culentum. Finally in 1999 it was agreed to be referred to as Solanum lycopersicum. The family of the tamoto based on it’s classification and taxonmy includes bell peppers, potato, eggplants, tomatillos, and tobacco.

The Classic Argument...

Fruit...

orVegetable?

(or berry?)

I f you picked either one of those, you’re wrong! Botanically tomatoes are a fruit. By culture and use it is a vegetable.

However, by being botanically a fruit, it is also falls into the berry category since it is indehiscent (non-shedding), pulpy, and has one or more seeds that are not stones.

Types

CherryCurrantRibbedGlobe

BeefsteakPearPlum

BellpepperOxheart

Tomato Sandwich Recipe

There are probbably more ways to eat tomatoes than there are people under the sun. However, that doesn’t

make this recipe any less tasty. So I now present to you my personal favorite way to eat tomatoes... in a tomato sand-wich!

Darya’s Tomato Sandwich

Ingredients:- American Cheese- Avocado- Bread- Butter- Onion & Chive Cream Cheese- Red Onion- Tomato

Directions:1. Half avocado, remove from skin, and slice halves.2. Slice tomato.3. Slice red onion.4. Butter two slices of bread.5. On the unbuttered side of the slice of bread, spread cream cheese.6. Place tomato, some red onion, and American cheese slice, between the slices of bread. Make sure the buttered side faces the outside.7. Warm up a pan.8. Place the sandwich on the pan until the side is golden brown. Repeat for the other side. Leave pan covered while toasting.9. When sandwich is toasted, remove from the pan and open it. Place the avacado slices in the sanwich, close it, and enjoy!

Sources

American Tomato Yearbook. Chicago: Agricultural Products, 1949, 1950, 1963. Print. published by C.S. McFarland Jr.

The Encyclopdia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. New York: Encyclopdia Britannica, 1910. Print.

Goldman, Amy, and Victor Schrager. The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008. Print.

Tarr, Yvonne Young. The Tomato Book. New York: Wings, 1995. Print.

“Tomatoes (ebook) by E. Heuvelink.” EBooks.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.

Work, Paul. The Tomato. New York: Orange Judd Pub., 1947. Print.