Tomatoes, fat and shiny draw me. They are elegant, almost preternatural, and sublime with their wealth of shades and flavors.
Tomato season has arrived in Spain.
Supermarket tomatoes appear all year round like key rings of plastic saints, so different from the fully sculpted and full rendering of Holy Figures in the main Churches and processions. Tomatoes fresh from local fields, like images of the Holy Mother, bring in the divine and claim space in the Public Market, at least from vendors that know the value of the local and of devotion.
One of those is Silvia a smiling blondish woman whose eyes carry traces of pain. Yet she is building a business emphasizing quality tomatoes. Every vegetable vendor in the market offers tomatoes, but her’s are a class apart.
Her stand is not filled to overflowing with product. It has medium sized baskets with tomatoes carefully chosen for ripeness as well as foremost quality. When I go to the market, I always look to see if Silvia is there and know, that if she is, I will spend more than I had planned.
This morning, while she finished with another client,noticed she had a few different products that seemed carefully chosen. The client was weighing and feeling the three different bottles of olive oil she offers from a grower in the nearby area of the Sierra de Cazorla, Jaen.
Not only is this tomato country, it is even more, olive country. Groves of gray green, smallish trees mat the city in all directions. White buildings, tile roofs, palm trees and olive groves symbolize because of their omnipresence this part of the Eastern Mediterranean. But some areas are better for growing than others, and some farmers have better reputations.
That is why I rely on Silvia. When we talk, I feel like I am before a found of knowledge.
Of course, I have years of experience talking to producers and vendors in markets in Latin America, the US, and now here. It is almost always worth getting to know your vendors and building a relationship with them.
Silvia greets me by name and remembers what I bought last time. This time I asked something different. I asked about two different bottles of chile pepper paste. They are the two major kinds of hot peppers of this part of Spain, the ñora and the choricero.
After quickly dispatching the issue of heat, we talked flavor. The choricero is darker and a bit smoky, while the ñora is brighter and airier. Silvia said that here in Alicante people prefer ñora for their cooking. They add just a little bit to their stews and such.
This led to some joking about machismo and men claiming to be able to eat the hottest chiles found.
Silvia dipped her head a bit in propriety, and then told about when she lived in Argentina. Her husband was from there and her mother-in-law would bring out chiles that were very hot. Thin and long, generally no more than an inch, the mother-in-law would giggle and call them “la puta que te parió”. A profanity that means the “whore that bore you” but is more equivalent to F*%$. They carry a striking and biting burst of heat.
We then talked about other vulgar names for them in South America and so on before we agreed that while one can eat very hot foods, that level of spice can make it difficult to taste other flavors.
We also lamented, that at least in Alicante, there is not a culture of chiles yet that takes note of color, texture, flavor, and—sigh—terroir.
Though that theme was spicy and sharp, it led to Silvia grumbling about how people want tomatoes to have a look that stands out from normal supermarket offerings. Sh pulled out a couple of beautiful smallish and perfect tomatoes, as if the ideal type of a vine ripened fruit.
People do not seem to want these though they have the best flavor, she said. They are a Japanese. tomato that only a few growers here have.
I too would have passed them by, but because I talked with her, I learned about a treasure.
I ended up taking a few of those and then a couple of big beefsteak-style tomatoes fresh from the edges of the city, Altea and Muxamel. They are wonderful. Their flavor is a beautiful balance between acidity and sweetness.
They make me want to go buy some fresh bread from a good local bakery and make tomato sandwiches, with fresh basil leaves from my balcony, a splash of good red wine vinegar, and that olive oil from. Cazorla in Jaén.