August 3rd, 2023

Here today, gone tomato.

Umami loves you.

Several Augusts ago a friend served me a simple little tomato salad that made a big impression. We were a few weeks into Peak Tomato and I’d eaten plenty of sliced Mortgage Lifters on toast with mayo. I’d served a few capreses, and that was good enough for me. Why mess with success?

Here, though, on my friend’s porch, the tomatoes were sliced into wedges and tossed with soy sauce and chopped cilantro, topped with crunchy fried shallots from a can. The soy sauce was doing the mayo’s job, and it made it look easy. Like the mayo and the cheese, the soy sauce boosted the fruit’s umami, a term that was getting a lot of press at the time.

Everyone knows about umami now, and you may be putting soy sauce and cilantro on your tomatoes already (or fish sauce and Thai basil, swoon). The Momofuku culinary lab suggests coarsely grating tomatoes and stirring them into vinaigrettes, or simmering with kombu for a tomato dashi—adding Parm for even more punch.

Of course tomatoes don’t need an umami boost—you may want to highlight their sweetness or acidity, or just leave them alone, for goodness sake. Whatever your go-to tomato recipe or technique, it’s a good time of year to see what else they can do. This roundup of breezy non-recipes is a great place to start.

-Rachel Caldwell, Newsletter Editor

Win a Week in Paris

and help end hunger in Maine.

Veggies to Table in Newcastle, Maine is a non-profit growing organic produce and flowers “to donate to local people experiencing hunger and needing joy, and to help ensure that no-one in our community has to choose between buying food or paying rent.”

Founder Erica Berman moved to Maine with her French husband in 2012, after 20 years in Paris, and they’ve selected unique, French-inspired prizes for the org’s second annual French Sweepstakes—a weekend in Montreal, a Le Creuset Sauteuse, and the grand prize, a week-long stay in a gorgeous Paris apartment.

All donations will go toward feeding the one in seven Mainers who do not have enough food on their tables and the 43% of students who require school meals every day.

Enter the sweepstakes here!

Flats Mentor Farm

A Central Mass farm suffers devastating losses

All 70 acres of Lancaster’s Flats Mentor Farm were submerged in the recent floods; nearly all crops were destroyed. Governor Healey visited as part of a weeks-long assessment of the damage on farms throughout the Commonwealth to discuss recovery and mitigation efforts.

Flats Mentor is cherished vendor at many farmers markets, including Central, Copley and Davis Squares, the farm is a program of the non-profit organization World Farmers, founded by Maria Moreiro.

In 1983, a Vietnam War refugee—a Laotian Hmong farmer—asked Maria’s husband for permission to grow vegetables on land between their barns, and he said yes. The next year, the Hmong woman asked if her family could farm on more land, and by the late 1990s, 190 Hmong farmers were growing on the 70-acre parcel of land that is now Flats Mentor Farm. Maria co-founded World Farmers in 2010, and this past year 307 farmers from Southeast Asia, Africa and South America grew over 40 crops, according to Maria; 70% of them were women.

“Most [of the people who come to World Farmers] already know how to grow,” she says, but the organization gives people the space to grow food for their families and communities or even to sell their harvest at farmers markets in the Greater Boston area under the name Flats Mentor Farm. An immigrant and farmer herself, Maria can relate to these people, she says. “The name of the farm fits exactly what we do. They actually learn from each other just by being here.”

Many of the farmers will be unable to sell at any markets for the remainder of the season, but some have crops growing on other landsites in Central MA, and have managed to harvest enough to sell. You can find them listed here.

More farm support

It’s been a tough season for our farming neighbors in Central and Western MA and Vermont. Remember: Now through August 23rd we’ll be donating 20% of all subscriptions purchased to NOFA VT Farmer Emergency Fund. Buy a gift for a friend or neighbor if you already subscribe!