If I had to pick only one piece of summer produce to eat, it might be the cherry tomato.
Cherry tomatoes are irresistible. Eating them is like eating candy. Actually, it’s better than eating candy. I like candy as much as the next person; I definitely have a sweet tooth. Nevertheless, after two or (heaven forbid) three pieces of candy, I can feel a little overwhelmed by their sweetness.
In contrast, I can eat many, many cherry tomatoes at a sitting. When I purchase a basket of them at a farm, I put it on my kitchen table. Each time I pass the table, I grab a little tomato or two to savor. Before I know it, the basket is gone. And I feel fantastic.
I don’t mean to downplay the appeal of the big, ripe tomato. At this time of year, I’m the queen of the BLT. Nevertheless, big tomatoes cannot match the pop of their smaller cousins.
According to the website “Tasting Table,” “the smaller size of cherry tomatoes means that all the things that make tomatoes taste great are more concentrated — sugars, malic acid, and the amino acid responsible for tomatoes’ umami flavor. “Compared to a regular-sized tomato, cherry tomatoes also have thinner skins and interior walls, offering comparatively more of the flavorful pulp.”
In case you were wondering what malic acid is, as I was, I looked it up on the internet. It is an organic compound that gives many fruits (and tomatoes are actually a fruit!) their tartness. It is also found in many other edibles, including apples, cherries, grapes, and rhubarb.
Some cosmetic companies put malic acid in skin creams claiming that it increases exfoliation and decreases wrinkles. I don’t know that I have ever noticed that cherry tomatoes reduce my wrinkles. They certainly don’t add to them, however.
Cherry tomatoes — or a form of them — are believed to be the first tomatoes ever grown. Health writer Danny Lewis penned an article about them for “Smithsonian” magazine in 2016 titled “The Contentious History of the Cherry Tomato.”
“To understand the bite-size snack,” Lewis wrote, “it is important to go back to the very beginnings of the tomato as a domesticated crop. While the wild tomato may have originated in the Andes in South America… it was cultivated by the Incas and Aztecs in Mexico sometime around 700 A.D. In fact, the word ‘tomato’ is derived from the Aztec word ‘tomatl.’ While the first tomatoes were tiny, pea-sized plants that grew in wild clusters like grapes, Central American growers transformed them into something quite different.”
In time, tomatoes took on a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. They made their way from the New World to the old.
“From there, the cherry tomato’s history gets a bit convoluted,” noted Lewis. “While the Greek island of Santorini has long claimed that the cherry tomato was first bred on its shores… researchers have found that the breed’s small size has more to do with the nutrient-poor volcanic soil and dry climate.”
Israel claims to have invented the cherry tomato, according to the podcast “Gastropod,” but that claim is only half right. Israeli scientists found a way to make cherry tomatoes hardier yet simultaneously sweeter. Tomato lovers should be grateful to them.
In fact, thanks to those scientists, even grocery-store cherry tomatoes are quite edible. They can’t match the flavor of the little gems from farms at this time of year, but they taste much better than their large counterparts in supermarkets. And they have an appealing deeper red color.
You could even make the salad below with them. I won’t do so for a couple of months, however. By then my palate will have almost forgotten the ultra-sweet flavor of the tiny tomatoes of summer.
The salad is a riff on a Greek salad, simple and bursting with flavor. I know that I specify in the recipe that the red onion should be finely chopped. I’m always too clumsy to chop anything particularly finely, but I’m sure the dish would be tastier if I managed to do so.
You may make the salad with either red or yellow cherry tomatoes. It comes together quickly and doesn’t disappoint.
Herbed Cherry Tomato Salad
Ingredients:
For the dressing:
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fresh oregano leaves or 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
For the salad:
1 pint ripe cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1/4 cup chopped pitted Greek olives
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 small cucumber, chopped into tiny chunks
crumbled feta cheese to taste
1 tablespoon (or more) fresh chopped parsley
1 tablespoon (or more) fresh chopped basil
Instructions:
In a small jar, combine the dressing ingredients.
Drain the tomatoes, which tend to be a bit wet, particularly when cut in half.
In a bowl, combine the tomatoes with the remaining salad ingredients. Toss with dressing. Serve immediately.
Serves 4 as a side salad.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.
