Product of the week: Cherry Tomatoes

10/Feb/2012

Berek from the Tomato Stall explains why this year's cherry tomatoes have arrived early, and suggests ways of making the best of this seasonal treat.

These are our first-of-the-season cherry tomatoes for 2012. They have a slightly sharp taste that compliments the sweetness and the fullness of the main flavour. The thing that people usually think of doing with cherry tomatoes is using them with salads, and these will work beautifully if you do that. But they are a lot more versatile than that.

One of the things that I like to do with them is to throw then into a roast for the last 10 minutes or so. By the time you serve the meat they will have heated through and begun to soften. It works best with richer roasts, or even stews, because you get this hot, sharp burst of flavour when you first bite into the tomato, and then the sweet flavours come through afterwards.

Another thing that they work well with is a salsa. The better your tomatoes, the better your salsa will be, so the sharpness and sweetness of these tomatoes will give your salsa real body with that lovely sharp edge that good salsa should have.

It sounds odd saying this today when it is freezing, but the warm weather over the winter means that the cherry tomatoes have come through a bit earlier this year. We wouldn’t normally expect them to arrive for at least another two or three weeks. But they still have the usual fullness of flavour, so it’s really nice to have this seasonal treat that little bit early.