Straight from the vine to the cook pot and to terrific trivia, everyone will enjoy this juicy tribute to the tangy, tasty tomato. Beginning with a horticultural look at resurgent vintage varieties, a comprehensive chart gives specific growing and eating details on more than 50 delicious types, both heirloom and hybrid. Find out how to create and cultivate the "essential tomato garden", even on a windowsill. Then, head straight to the kitchen with information on how to store, peel, freeze, dry, can, and cook up the harvest! Recipes include luscious dishes such as tomato soup, jam, bread, and green tomato pie. Round out the enlightening feast with fun facts on the tomato's history and tomato festivals.

Reviews

Here are two celebrations of everyone's favorite summer vegetable. Lundy is a food writer and the author of Butter Beans to Blackberries, among other titles; coauthor Stehling is the chef/owner of a North Carolina restaurant called Early Girl Eatery (named after the tomato). She provides the history, science, and other significant tomato facts, while he supplies the recipes (some 50 in all), which are interspersed throughout the text. There are vibrant color photographs, lovely watercolors, reproductions of period advertisements and other memorabilia, and a chapter on the cult film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! There is also a "Tomato Garden Primer" and a lengthy chart on growing and cooking with different varieties. Recommended for larger libraries. Davis-Hollander (founder & director, Eastern Native Seed Conservancy) presents a more ambitious but highly readable book. He includes a great deal more information, from a detailed chapter on heirloom tomato specifics and profiles of tomato growers and other notables to sidebars on tomato festivals around the country and a thorough guide to cultivation. Inspired by a diverse variety of cuisines, his 150 recipes-some of which come from well-known chefs (including Daniel Boulud and Rick Bayless)-are more appealing and simply mouth-watering. Recommended for most collections (where it should join Joanne Weir's excellent You Say Tomato). [A Good Cook Book Club selection.] Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.