Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the most versatile of all berries, falling under the classification of fruits, rather than vegetables - although we tend to think of them as the latter due to the fact that they’re used in savoury dishes (although you must try my tomato and celery dessert). Tomatoes come in thousands of varieties, with colours ranging from white through to orange-striped, green and the more familiar red. Size-wise they can be tiny pea-tomatoes through to huge beef-steak varieties, but the one defining characteristic is that they should always be a pleasurable balance of acidity and ripened sweetness. Unfortunately, due to our huge worldwide demand for them 12 months of the year, many tomatoes we eat are bland, watery, almost floury and tasteless. The truth is, the best tomatoes are grown in the sun during the summer months. Because we want to eat them in the depths of winter, tomatoes have unwittingly, but frequently, been used in the food miles debate, an erroneous argument that claims that the further food has to travel the worse it will be for the global environment. In an early British January, the best thing you could do to help the planet would be either to avoid eating fresh tomatoes at all, or use ones that have been shipped in from warmer regions like Spain - the cost to the environment of heating local glasshouses 24 hours a day far outweighs the fuel and related environmental costs used to ship them in from non-heated countries.