Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Latest post from MARKSVEGPLOT – a blog about food and gardening in England”

Regular readers know that I am exceptionally fond of growing chillis and tomatoes. To me, a ripe tomato or a ripe chilli is an object of beauty. Not only do I love to look at it, but I also love to feel it, because these things have a certain sensuous allure! (“Now he’s really flipped” you’re thinking…). Seriously though, don’t you think this is a glorious sight?

More often than not the chillis we use in cooking are the “ordinary” red ones (like the Cayenne and Ring of Fire ones seen below), but I just like growing the other types for the range of shapes and colours they provide. We probably won’t eat any of those black Calico chillis, but it was fun growing them.

Now what about this?

It’s a fruit of the beefsteak tomato variety “Larisa”, grown from seeds kindly given to me by Eddy Ceyssens in Belgium. It weighed about 250g. Not a perfect specimen I know, but very satisfying nonetheless. The colour is actually much more pink than red, though this doesn’t show up so well in my photos.

Here is a view of the underside. Beefsteak tomatoes often have a rough patch at the blossom end.

This is also a “Larisa”, but one of a much less regular shape:

Look underneath this one…

Right, so which would you rather have – perfectly round (boring and bland) tomatoes from the supermarket, or tasty tomatoes with character, from the garden?

Here’s a photo of tomatoes (albeit under-ripe ones) and chillis together. Salsa, anyone?

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