When the Italian immigrants arrived in Wellington at the turn of the century they tasted the New Zealand hothouse tomatoes and called them ‘water bombs’. To this day the supermarkets fill their produce aisles with these same tasteless tomatoes, grown all year round in hothouses with never even a price variation for the seasons, while in home vegetable gardens all over the country proper tomatoes are being planted outdoors in October during Labour weekend to ripen in the sun and taste AMAZING. I saw last year at Moore Wilsons, the specialty supermarket which stocks gourmet food, small trays of outdoor grown heirloom varieties were being sold for a huge price. I bought one!

The aztecs cultivated the common tomato in modern day Mexico. It was a golden fruit and called pomodoro, golden apple, when it finally made it to Italy after the Spaniards brought to Europe. Initially regarded with suspicion because it was thought to be a close cousin of deadly nightshade it is now loved the world around and a staple of many cuisines.

A research facility in Whanganui called Heritage Food Crops Research (heritagefoodcrops.org.nz) is currently conducting research into heritage tomatoes, specifically the original yellow or golden varieties and are finding significantly larger amounts of the protective antioxidant lycopene in these tomatoes then the modern hybrid red tomatoes. Until recently it was thought tomatoes had to be cooked to take advantage of this powerful antioxidant which has been linked to preventing the growth of many forms of cancer and specifically prostrate cancer. This research is proving that the yellow fruit provide significantly higher amounts of lycopene in the raw form.

Easy to grow in our New Zealand climate, they grow from saved seed and indeed there is evidence to suggest that by saving your seed you build a stronger gene pool to grow plants better suited to your environment, or ‘terroir’. Squeeze the seeds onto a paper towel, label and dry, then put away somewhere cold and dark until the following July when you can start growing them in a pots in a warm sheltered spot to be ready to plant out in October.

Read here how to make Greek stuffed tomatoes with rice (and optional meat). And a couple of French style stuffed tomatoes – sauteed tomatoes a la provencal and stuffed tomatoes a la bonne femme.