Shopping List
Done.
Farmer Lee Jones and Fresh Tomatoes
Now that the shopping list is out of the way, it’s time for an update. In 2017, we asked Farmer Lee to name his favorite tomato. He assured us he could—but then he needed another minute to think about it. And then another minute. You get our drift. Ultimately, his answer was: “It was definitely a cherry tomato! Or, err, maybe an heirloom tomato . . . or a toy box tomato. Or maybe a currant tomato.”
So, we promised our readers an update once we could get his answer pinned down.
In 2018, we asked him again about his favorite—but he was busy strolling among the crops, rattling off the list of possibilities. In fact, we were starting to worry about where he’d wandered off and were about to send out a search party when we saw him with fresh soil beneath his fingernails, muttering, “Green Bee Tomatoes, Sun Gold Tomatoes, Pineapple Tomatillo, Sweet Pea Currant, Mixed Toy Box . . .”
Fast-forward to 2019, and the good news is that he’s finally made his decision! Seriously, he told us he did. The bad news? He got another phone call, and so we’ve been on hold for a while.
A really long while.
So, in the meantime, here are links where you can explore the possibilities:
When Farmer Lee gets off the phone, we’ll ask again about his favorite tomato and his favorite kind of basil. Hang tight.
Tomatoes and Basil in Cuisines
Tomatoes play a key role in many cuisines worldwide, but we’re focusing on Italian dishes here because of a story reflecting the importance of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. 1889 Raffaele Esposito created a dish to honor Queen Margherita of Savoy. This dish, named the Margherita pizza, became quite popular because its ingredients echoed the colors of the Italian flag:
- red tomatoes
- white mozzarella cheese
- green basil
This wasn’t the first time these ingredients were combined in an Italian dish. That happened in 1866, but it was the 1889 dish that made tomato, mozzarella, and basil a centerpiece combination for Italian cuisine.
Testing Our Tomatoes
In a single year’s time, we’ve grown more than 150 varieties of tomatoes, Farmer Lee Jones explained to Ohio Magazine, and then we sell about 100 of them. The rest are grown for research purposes so we can experiment and learn and then develop exactly the right tomatoes for our chefs. We might, for example, have a chef who needs a small, high-impact tomato, one that’s high in acid and moisture, with thick skin. Because of what we learn through our research, we can provide that chef with exactly what he or she needs.
Testing goes far beyond the tomato. It serves as an example for the research and development, quality control, and customer service that permeate everything we do at the farm. We’re just as thorough in researching and growing our basil varieties.
Varieties of Farm-Fresh Basil
Overall, fresh basil offers a floral aroma, along with a unique flavor that’s sort of sweet and sort of spicy. Varieties that we grow include:
- African Blue basil: This rich and mellow basil variety is ideal for seasoning dishes that feature red meat, chicken, or fish, as well as soups and salads. The leaves are a slightly grayed shade of green, with speckled purple underneath. The buds are purple and open into delicious and lovely lavender flowers.
- Opal basil: This variety is light, sweet and mild, an excellent choice if you want a fresh basil flavor that isn’t overpowering. Initially, the flavor offers up a touch of lemon-lime, and the texture is succulent and crunchy. Leaves range from light to dark purple.
- Thai basil: This is the basil to choose if you want to add a slight anise flavor to your dishes. Thai basil is clean, sweet, refreshing, and nice and juicy. The texture is smooth and soft, and the stem is crispy. The herb is purple with green leaves.
- Traditional basil: Think about the flavors of pepper, anise, and mint in an extremely aromatic fresh herb with a melt-in-your-mouth flavor and texture. Fresh basil leaves are a lovely deep green.
- Lemon basil: Fresh lemon basil offers a lemony aroma and adds the zippy flavor of lemon zest to your dishes. The leaves are light green and have a nice texture; the stem is crunchy.
- Mixed basil: Use mixed basil, the best of the day, harvested fresh, to get the best of all worlds.
With so many choices of basil and tomatoes, there are countless ways to pair fresh tomatoes and basil up for unforgettable dishes and menus. Here’s more about why certain food pairings work as well as they do.
What Makes a Perfect Pairing?
Why, for example, is tomato and basil such a perfect pairing? Why do heirloom tomatoes pair up so well with fresh micro basil?
For that answer, we turn to Jamie Simpson, executive chef of the Culinary Vegetable Institute, who says the following. “The short answer is that tomato and basil pair well together, aromatically speaking.”
He also believes, though, that there’s more to the picture. “This food pairing,” he continues, “is actually largely driven as a cultural thing. In other words, people are used to seeing tomato and basil used together in dishes, and they’re used to eating them together, when you could really do the same thing with tomato and marigold, or tomato and mint, as just two examples.”
Chef Jamie points out that in Asian countries, chefs and diners might use soy sauce as a condiment for tomatoes, while in the United States, we might add salt. It’s for the same purpose but using different ingredients. “When you want to challenge yourself and get out of the box, you can take classic cultural staples, like tomato and basil, and find other ingredients with the same intensity to create new food pairings. Experiment.”
Cultural-Specific Food Pairings
There are intriguing facts about food pairings and how they’re viewed in Western cuisines versus Asian ones. In Western cuisines, for example, food pairings are successful if the ingredients have similar flavor profiles that blend well together. In Asian cuisines, though, chefs tend to avoid ingredients that have similar flavors. In fact, the more flavors that two ingredients have in common, the less likely that chefs will pair them in Asian cuisines. In contrast, in North America, same 13 core ingredients are found in 74.4 percent of dishes. These ingredients include butter, milk, eggs, cane molasses, wheat, and vanilla.
Based on that, it’s reasonable to say that food pairings are a Western notion, not necessarily a global one.
Aromatics and Pairings
Returning to Chef Jamie’s comment about aromatics and pairing, how we interpret a smell in connection with a taste is also cultural. People in the United States and other Western cultures, for example, typically connect the smell of vanilla with sweetness. This is something that, because of cultural-based food pairings, our brains automatically do. In Asia, though, vanilla is more often used in savory dishes, so people there typically connect the smell of vanilla with a salty taste.
Influenced by Our Environment (and Genetics, Too!)
Common sense backs up the idea that we eat the foods that are more readily available to us and often learn to like the foods that people around us appreciate. Is this always true? No. Is it typically true? Yes.
Science backs up this notion, as well, with studies sharing how much of “our food loves and hates are learned,” with flavors often “programmed according to how we usually consume them.”
Scientific research also shows how food preferences are actually built into our DNA, which may be more surprising. Based upon genetics, each person can experience taste differently, as the basic tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami—are detected in a unique way on his or her tongue. More specifically, each person may experience a flavor differently because we each have different amounts of the various receptors on our tongues. Because of this, differences in taste sensitivities exist based on geography.
Pair Up with The Chef’s Garden
For more than 30 years, the Jones family and everyone at The Chef’s Garden have devoted themselves to working in tandem with the world’s most extraordinary chefs. We hold plenty of conversations and collaborate together, with the ultimate result being a narrative intrinsic to the quality of the products we grow and the sustainable agricultural practices we implement to do it.
The foundation of this philosophy is our soil, which we continually replenish with nutrients that are depleted over time to produce the most nutritionally dense fresh vegetables possible. By replenishing our soil naturally and giving it the time it needs, we deliver products of unrivaled quality and flavor.
We recognize and embrace traditional farming philosophies and techniques that have sustained our farmers for generations. Since we recognize the profound importance of growing crops naturally and environmentally friendly, we are deeply committed to “growing vegetables slowly and gently, in full accord with nature.”
We are genuinely proud of the deep and authentic relationships we have developed with the chefs we have worked with over the years, something we call The Chef and Farmer Concept®. We are relentlessly devoted to delivering to chefs exactly what they require. We are here to serve as your personal farmer and will grow for you virtually anything your creativity inspires. Innovation is a guiding principle at the farm, and we are continuously developing new product sizes, colors, textures, and flavors for you to taste that we hope will galvanize your imagination, spark a fresh idea, and keep your guests marveling at the dishes you serve them in your restaurant. We’re also always on the lookout for heirloom vegetables sourced the world over that are unique, extraordinary and have an enticing story to tell.
We’d love to have you join in this ongoing conversation. If we can help you with farm-fresh produce, please contact us online, and an experienced product specialist will provide you with exactly what you need right when you need it.