Perhaps it was my very sheltered upbringing; I was just talking the other day about how my suburban town had literally two grocery stores ('Safeway' and a 'Super A'), and my mom only ever shopped at one of them. Of course, when I got older and moved into the city, I quickly discovered how cool ethnic groceries from the Asian and Italian superstores can be.
Well, moving to THIS city is even crazier with grocery options. It is entirely conceivable that you could get anything edible at all here (perhaps even a fair few inedible items as well?)
:)
Anyway... it always feels nifty to get an heirloom this or that... partly because of the novelty arising from my above-mentioned upbringing, but partly also because of my own particular interest in husbandry and the gradual evolution of plants.
Anything heirloom is, by definition, NOT a mass-produced, engineered-for-industry-and-feeding-the-world type of crop. And I think that's cool. Some determined farmer somewhere decided to hold on to (or ingeniously acquired) some long-lost strain of food that just isn't all that popular anymore.
Well, the other day I found some golden roma tomatoes. I mean, these aren't THAT special, it's not the coolest heirloom food I've ever found, but I found it particularly noteworthy because I love roma tomatoes.
In fact, I just wrote a post about it the other week:
;)
Sure, I've had yellow tomatoes before. I'm not even sure if they're considered heirloom or not, they're so prevalent. But yellow ROMA tomatoes? Never seen those before.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
I turned the bulk of these into a delicious shallot-butter-red-wine sauce.
Here are some photos:
Butter, onion, shallots, and then (later) garlic.
Déglacer the pan with (in this case) a relatively generous portion of red wine, cook it down while scraping the pan periodically, for at least five minutes.
Add to delicious golden roma tomatoes.
Serve on pasta... or whatever really. Delicious stuff.
