Tomatoes — season, tips, and recipes in New Zealand
Tomatoes is a vegetables available in New Zealand during December, January, February, March, April, peaking in January, February, March. This page is a practical guide for home cooks: when to buy tomatoes, how to pick a good one, how to store it, what it goes well with, three original recipes, and detailed nutrition information.
NZ-grown tomatoes taste completely different from imported ones. The difference between a January tomato and a July one is night and day.
How to pick a good one
Smell the stem end. A good tomato smells like a tomato plant. Heavy for its size. Vine-ripened always better.
How to store it
Never refrigerate. Cold kills flavour permanently. Room temperature, stem side down.
Goes well with
basil: A case where two ingredients from the same climate and season have co-evolved to complement each other. Basil's eugenol and linalool aroma compounds amplify tomato's aromatic complexity. The combination is better than either alone in a way that's hard to explain and easy to taste.
mozzarella: Tomato's acidity cuts through mozzarella's fat. Mozzarella's creaminess moderates tomato's sharpness. The combination is structurally complementary and is among the most widely eaten food pairings on earth.
olive oil: Fat carries tomato's aroma compounds and makes them more volatile -- the tomato smells and tastes more intensely of itself. Every culture that grows tomatoes figured this out independently.
garlic: Garlic's glutamates amplify tomato's existing umami. When you cook garlic with tomato the savouriness increases in a way that neither achieves alone. The basis of almost every tomato sauce.
anchovy: Anchovies are almost pure glutamate. Added to tomato they amplify the existing umami without tasting of fish. Used in small quantities they disappear into the sauce while making everything taste more intensely savoury.
Recipes
Classic Tomato Sauce
The base for everything. Freezes well.
Ingredients: 1kg ripe tomatoes, 3 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp olive oil, handful basil, pinch sugar, salt
Method: Score and blanch tomatoes, peel. Gently fry garlic in oil. Add tomatoes, crush with spoon. Simmer 30 min until thick. Add basil, sugar, salt.
Tomato & Mozzarella Salad
Only make this when tomatoes are at peak.
Ingredients: 4 ripe tomatoes, 1 ball mozzarella, handful basil, 2 tbsp olive oil, flaky salt, black pepper
Method: Slice tomatoes. Tear mozzarella. Arrange on plate. Tear basil. Drizzle oil. Season.
Roasted Tomato Soup
Better than any tinned version.
Ingredients: 1kg tomatoes (halved), 1 onion (quartered), 4 cloves garlic, 2 tbsp olive oil, 500ml stock, salt, pepper, basil
Method: Toss tomatoes, onion, garlic with oil. Roast 200C for 30 min. Blend with stock until smooth. Season. Serve with basil.
Nutrition
One medium tomato provides 25% of your daily vitamin C and 20% of your vitamin A. The star nutrient is lycopene, a powerful antioxidant. Here's the thing: cooking tomatoes dramatically increases lycopene absorption. Tinned tomatoes and tomato sauce are more nutritious in this respect than raw. About 22 calories per tomato.