Stop throwing the only ingredient that will make your tomato sauces even more tomatoes

I have been swimming in the local basil for about four months now. Name a way to use basil. Anyway! I, in moments of despair, did this and more with all the basil, I keep stopping to grow. It is enough to say that I had my filling of basil and I therefore looked for an exciting change of rhythm in the seasoning department.

Thus, to try to add spices (and, like other herbs) to my life recently, I pulled the recipe for fresh tomato sauce from Daniel from 2014. In it, it concedes that, although the basil is the simplest and most punchy option to throw in the sauce to infuse the freshness, the tomato leaves are an option to give an option of freshness and tomato more robust.

Daniel quotes Harold McGee from his founding book On food and cooking As a jump point for experience: “Tomato leaves have a fresh tomato aroma thanks to their leaf enzymes and prominent aromatic oil glands.” It seemed so nice (and reminded me of: Loewe has a tomato sheet soap of $ 80 that I wanted to add to my lists of wishes “things that no one can justify buying”. Maybe I can convince my husband to think about it for Hanukkah 2027 !!)! I became very excited to try a different version of my essential tomato sauce.

Why (and how) use tomato sheets

First, adding tomato sheets where you think otherwise using only basil is an easy way to mitigate waste. Second, they are aromatic like hell! Hence soap at $ 80 !!

In order to try Daniel’s exchange of exchange, during a magnificent weekend in August, I went to Alssed Farms in Chester, NJ, to get my hands on tomatoes and their leaves. As Daniel mentions in its original recipe, it is not exactly easy to find tomatoes sold with their leaves, but if you make tomatoes grow at home alongside all this basil, it is a breeze. At Alssede, I had to pass in front of the farm section on The farm itself and in the fields of choice to get there. (Farmers and agricultural representatives have told me that the majority of people who are passionate about their jersey tomatoes are not interested in accompanying sheets.)

I left with a small batch of tomatoes with links in hand, and I almost immediately threw a cup in a batch of simmering sauce at home. Don’t you know, Daniel was right! They have indeed added a herbaceous and green flavor to the company. My lot did not produce the anise that he had mentioned, but there was a distinct freshness that none of my local basil had yet provided this summer. And although I enjoyed the new shiny terror, I would probably simmer a small batch of leaves (maybe half a cup?) The next time for a slight blow, rather than a complete explosion. I would then throw everything that remains in a Pico de Gallo.

Why don’t people do that!?

In addition to the above -mentioned availability problem, there is a common skepticism about cooking with tomato sheets, resulting from a long -term belief that they are unhealthy or even toxic. McGee wrote on this subject for the New York Times in 2009, noting that mistrust around tomato leaves is not entirely Impregnated: “[They belong] to the unloved Morshade family, whose members accumulate toxic alkaloids. For centuries after the Spanish took the tomato of Mexico in Europe, the fruits and plants were considered dangerous. »»

That said, these toxic alkaloids (solanine and tomatine, to be specific) are only concerned when ingested in large quantities. In fact, there are advantages proven to ingest small quantities of the latter – McGee underlines a 2000 study by Dr Mendel Friedman of the DoA which showed that tomatine “apparently links cholesterol in the digestive system, and the combination is excreted to ride the body of alkaloid tomatines and cholesterol. Unwanted LDL cholesterol in animals. A 2021 study published in the NCBI also pointed out that the “multiple potential health benefits against infections” of tomatine, noting that tomato leaves have the most tomatine from any part of the plant.

All this to say: people may not know that they can (1) find tomato sheets, (2) eat tomato leaves and / or (3) add a little freshness (in complete safety) to the things they probably already do with these tomato sheets. But they can and they should! Or they can send me a stupid hand soap that I really want inexplicably. It is also a fun way to diversify!

HAPPY TOMATO ELIGE-ACHAT!

September 2024