|
Post by templeton on Mar 11, 2014 4:18:41 GMT -5
I've just spent too much time this last week cooking down pasata from store-bought 'sauce tomatoes', and some piddling amounts of homegrown toms. The blacks make a great paste, but the store tomatoes take forever to cook down. Ray had given me some Scatalone paste tom seeds, which I cooked tonight - a revelation in processing time, so dry.
So why aren't there heaps of different coloured paste tomatoes? I've found a couple of black varieties are available in the US, but am I reinventing the wheel to try some black X paste crosses? Are the existing ones good? And what would make the perfect black paste? What characteristics should I look to combine? I could just start with the parents growing in the garden now, but I'm trying to be a bit more strategic... T
|
|
|
Post by iva on Mar 11, 2014 5:51:59 GMT -5
Have you tried Black Pepper? That is a darn good dark brown dry paste tomato. Also, since you asked about different colored paste tomatoes, try Eros for an orange one, also very good and dry. Makes an apricot colored sauce...
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Mar 11, 2014 9:51:42 GMT -5
Part of the reason, templeton is that, quite simply; a lot of tomato colors just don't LOOK good when cooked. Heating destroy's some coloring compounds, and alters others. In general, a lot of tomatoes tend to go go towards "normal" tomato as they cook in any case. Oranges tend to deepen and pinks to yellow, so they end up more or less the same color as sauce from reds (a little lighter or darker, but usually more or less in the same ballpark). Ditto most purples and blacks; the heat destroys a lot of the chlorophyll and what you have left is a mostly red sauce (dark red, but still red). Plae oranges, yellows and whites tend to wind up orange. Green has the biggest problem. The high clorophyll content means it doesn't dissapear completely, but the heat does drestroy a lot of it. Add in the fact that most green fleshed tomatoes have a fair amount of yellow in there makeup too,(which is orangeing with heat)and the resultant sauce is usually somewhere in color between the olive drab of pesto that's been allowed to be exposed to air for a long time/oxidized avocado, to a greeny brown that is frankly not all that appetizing. I suppose in theory if you had a "pure" green or white tomato (one that had no yellow pigments AT ALL) results might be different. But by and large most green fleshed pastes (like green sausage) are best reserved for salsas and brushcettas; things that don't involve actually cooking the tomatoes.
|
|
|
Post by flowerweaver on Mar 11, 2014 10:18:30 GMT -5
We have grown Black Plum Paste tomato for many years. It cooks up to a brown sauce, but the flavor is excellent. If you'd like some seeds, let me know. They are already acclimated to bad soil and little rain LOL!
|
|
|
Post by 12540dumont on Mar 11, 2014 11:48:19 GMT -5
Yeah, I can attest to the whole and then it turned brownish sort of thing. Check out my big hairy eyeballs. Once these came out of the canner, they were just ordinary. I had visions of a lovely green sauce with whole tomato bits. Didn't happen. I have made lovely orange sauce with a tomato called "Burning Spear". I just wish most of the pastes didn't have the dreaded BER.
|
|
|
Post by flowerweaver on Mar 11, 2014 11:51:21 GMT -5
Have not experienced BER with the Black Plum. I have with San Marzano. Can't even get Amish Paste to grow, I'll leave that for the Amish. I'm trying out Egyptian paste this year to see how it does.
|
|
|
Post by templeton on Mar 12, 2014 16:12:43 GMT -5
Thanks for all the advice, folks. I grew green sausage once, but it didn't do well for me at all - BER was horrendous, and low yield. As you suggest, BER has been a real problem for me with pastes - Opalka, Roma, etc. Suprisingly, the two Pastes I grew this year Scatalone and Ropreco had hardly any BER - maybe it was just the season, or my soil prep. I might go out and check the plants still standing and try for a late cross of Jap Black Trifele X Scatalone if I can find any flowers.Was just wondering how I might pick if the F1s are true crosses, then realised Scat is RL and JBT is PL, so should do the cross that way. This is handy - the JBT is in a spot where I can leave it to grow out for a month or so. T
|
|
|
Post by jondear on Mar 12, 2014 16:53:35 GMT -5
If you, or anyone, wants to trial a big fat pink dry oxheart, I saved a few hundred seeds last year for sharing. My neighbor gave me a bunch of tomatoes a few years ago and I've found them just the ticket for proccesing. Not great for fresh eating, but thickens anything I put it in. No Ber for me here. He called it "Portuguese tomato".
|
|