days but not in direct sunlight (as some cookbooks suggest). Direct sun cooks or spoils them before

they ripen. To speed ripening, put the tomatoes in a paper bag that traps and concentrates the natural

ethylene gas from the tomato. The paper bag lets the accumulated moisture escape that hastens

spoiling. Banana is a generous ethylene gas generator. If you have one, put in the bag with the

tomato.

When cooking tomato-rich dishes, avoid aluminum and cast-iron pots if the cooking process

is longer than 20 or 30 minutes. Not only the acid in the tomatoes leach out too much of the metal,

giving the dish an off-flavor, but tomatoes discolor by these metal pots, eventually turning dingy

brown.

Dried and sun-dried tomatoes

Dried tomatoes, also called sun-dried tomatoes, were possibly the most trendy vegetable on

the American markets in the 1980s and they still somehow survived into the 1990s though they lost

their tarnish. I also think that they are the most overrated vegetable. Their appeal is their appearance.

Dried tomatoes dress up a plate or a dish with their pleasing shape, texture and color. It is the flavor

that is somewhat overrated and often does not come up to expectations.

The idea of drying tomatoes to preserve them is not a new one. This alternative to canning is

easy, but it requires warm sunny weather during and after the tomato harvesting season. Any rain or

periods of cloudy, cool weather, and the sun-dried tomatoes turn mold-covered and semi-dried. This

means that climate limits making truly sun-dried tomatoes to very few tomato-growing areas in the

world: the Mediterranean regions of Italy and France and California.

Italians have produced sun-dried tomatoes for at least a century. In the early 1980s importers

introduced them to North American markets and they were accepted instantly, even though the

imported products were quite costly. Sun-dried tomatoes made a hit with the nouvelle cuisine chefs

of the West Coast who constantly search out innovative new products.

They were particularly popular in the winter when red-colored produce was rare. (Red

peppers were still not common and outrageously expensive back then, because they were air-

freighted from Holland.) High price or not, dried tomatoes have a long shelflife and are available

when needed. They solve the problem of providing a desirable eye-catching red color on the plate

during the colorless winter months. That is why the red pepper has been such a smash hit, too.

Home cooks picked up the idea and sun-dried tomatoes were on their way, helped by a

generous dose of intense marketing. It didn't take long before several California dried fruit

producers noticed this very profitable opportunity to compete with the pricey Italian imports. Since

they had both the know-how and equipment to dry fruits, it was but a short step to add tomatoes to

their line of dried produce. Dried tomatoes, they discovered, bring in much more revenue than

prunes and apricots.

To dry tomatoes in the traditional Italian way by sun is slow and labor intensive. It takes 8 to

10 days under the weakening late summer sun. Leaving the tomatoes exposed that long to insects is

somewhat questionable, too. Italians use their sun-dried tomatoes in pasta sauce, so they are always

cooked before eating. Americans, on the other hand, eat their sun-dried tomatoes raw or blanched

quickly to reconstitute the moisture content. Drying does not destroy the bacterial contamination so

for export, they add sulfur and salt to eliminate bacteria. The California processors also tried heat

treatment to solve the problem.

There are three major ways for American processors to dry tomatoes:

1. Like the Italians do, under the sun for 8 to 10 days, then pasteurize to produce a safe and

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