I’m not a tomato snob. All tomatoes are good tomatoes. A fancy tomato to me is pretty much anything you can’t regularly get in any old grocery store. Go into any fancy supermarket or natural grocery store and get any tomato that looks more interesting than your average tomato. I’ll get excited about it.
Store-bought tomatoes are designed to ripen at exactly the same time, get picked early, be sturdy during transit to the produce store and store for a longer time on store shelves.
Heirloom tomatoes are selected to taste good when grown in your region.
No tomato can do it all, so when selecting for store bought tomato characteristics, flavor gets lost in the shuffle.
Both of the responses to this seem to assume that my love of tomatoes comes from Italy or Italian culture. It comes from the American deep south, much closer to where tomatoes actually come from. Adding oil or extra ingredients takes away from the moist, cooling nature of a tomato on a hot summer day. A tomato is bursting with refreshment. All you gotta do is let it out.
I’m not going to get into details, and it wouldn’t be a fun story. It’s just one of my many sad, quiet stories about families paying lip service to the idea of love.
Haven’t seen anyone mention this one, so let’s go.
The most fascinating cheese would be Casu Martzu (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu). It is illegal to produce and consume pretty much everywhere, including in Sardinia where it is produced and was invented. It is the world most dangerous cheese, and people have died eating it.
The Wikipedia articles goes into how it is produced, but essentially you leave a good old pecorino outside with some rind removed to allow flies to put their eggs in the cheese. The larvae then consume the cheese and ferment it further. You need to eat it while the larvae are still alive, although the larvae can survive your digestive system and grow in our intestine. Traditionally you should eat the maggots, but you don’t have to.
I would never eat it, mind you, but it is definitely fascinating that such a thing exists.
Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[4][12] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping.
Garlic and herb or black pepper? Personally, I don’t mind either but my partner will only buy garlic and herb so I have to smuggle black pepper into my work lunches
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