Monday, July 14, 2008

Ode to Tomatoes

By Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Heaven is a blue bowl of red, red tomatoes






A friend and I ate at a new restaurant last night and at the end of the meal the chef (a three-Michelin star one too!) came out and took us on a tour of his kitchens. He was full of passion for food and cooking, pointing out how all his vegetables were imported from Italy and look, how ripe and perfect the tomatoes are and how fresh the fish from Hokkaido. To our delighted surprise my friend and I found ourselves with a small gift of a bunch of the tomatoes. Of course I couldn't wait to sample them, and this morning I had them for my first breakfast (a bad Hobbit habit I know, having more than one brekkie). What could be a more heavenly start to a fine summer's day than a blue-patterned bowl of bite-size, perfectly ripe Italian tomatoes, doused with extra virgin olive oil, with a little salt and a few basil leaves added to provide that perfect salty-herbal counterpoint to the sweetness? Tomato really is fruit!