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Tomatoes, the Ubiquitous Fruit
 BECOME A KITCHEN BOTANIST: Tomatoes, the Ubiquitous Fruit
Do you ever have a day when you don’t eat a tomato in some form?
Fresh tomatoes are on burgers and in salads, tomato juice, salsa, and chile. You’ll find them on pizza and in soups, stews, and casseroles. Perhaps you know people who cannot travel without a bottle of tomato ketchup.
This fruit is always with us. But tomatoes are natives of South America, and were taken to Europe and South Asia by the Spanish and Portuguese. Many Italians and South Asians today find this hard to accept, and can’t imagine their cuisine existed without tomatoes.
Most of the tomatoes raised in the U.S. are used for tomato paste. Some paste is used for tomato juice and a lot more is spread on pizza. The variety used for paste has a lot more solid flesh and much less juice than the varieties you buy at the grocery. Those fresh tomatoes you find in stores are often hard, because they have to be picked green so they will withstand transport. Put them in a plastic bag with any ripe fruit, and they will ripen, because the gas ethylene is produced by ripe fruits and causes green fruits to naturally ripen. Tomatoes grown locally spent less time in transit, and could be picked when they are ripe. You can do your own taste test to see if local tomatoes and local varieties are more flavorful than those imported over long distances.
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