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March 23, 2023 25 mins

Eva and Maite explore the backstory of this delicious vegetable that was first cultivated in Mesoamerica. From seeds to salsa, marinara to ketchup, to its bad reputation when it arrived to Europe - the history of the tomato is a unique one. Also on this episode, chef/owner of Holbox Restaurant in Los Angeles, Gilberto Cetina, joins us to talk about how the tomato is a jack of all trades.

 

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tomato tomato. Yes, we should make a shirt that says
tomato tomato. We're the only ones I find this funny.
Oh my god, that's hilarious. Guess what today an episode

(00:20):
is about. My name is Eva Longoria and I am
and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores
our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll
talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients,
and beverages. So make yourself at home. Speaking of tomato,

(00:49):
tomato is a tomato a vegetable or fruit? Mighty, It's
kind of both, but botanically, Botanically speaking, the tomatoes are fruit.
In eighteen ninety three, a decision by the Supreme Court
of the United States said that tomatoes should be classified
as a vegetable and tax as a vegetable. I love

(01:09):
that there is a there's a Supreme Court decision on this,
Like what come on, Supreme Court? And in eighteen ninety three,
there was a lot of shit going on in the
country that they should have been more focused on, but
deciding on whether or not the tomato was a vegetable
or a fruit was taking precedent. What's wild to me

(01:29):
is that when people think of the tomato. They usually
associated with the Italians, the tomato sauce on the pizza,
marinara sauce, you know. But tomatoes are endemic to Mehico, Mexico,
one of the many ingredients that Mexico has given the world.
So who first cultivated tomatoes? They're endemic to Mexico and

(01:50):
meso America. But like who first started like cultivating, we
don't know exactly because the seeds are so tiny that
it's hard to trace. You know. Really they were first
cultivated in the ninth century by the Aztecs, although again
they were probably cultivated earlier than that. Sophie Coo, this
amazing historian who wrote this book which I love, America's

(02:13):
First Cuisines. She says that the met that the tomato
very likely originated in South America but made its way
north to Mexico, you know, hundreds of years ago, probably
carried by birds. Same for chiles, which we'll talk about
in another episode, and potato and potato, pineapple, like so

(02:35):
many things that are native to you know, South America. Yeah,
so you know it's something that they were consuming, you know,
pre conquest, sliced tomatoes, probably making salsas like we like
we do today, will make some sort of salsa or
some sort of pico pico de gallo Francisco. He wrote
this so basically talking about his observations of New Spain

(02:59):
and fifty sixty and he describes it. The tomatoes were
added to sauces and stews to temper the heat of
the Chiles, and they added a really nice tartness to food.
Oh that makes sense, yeah, acidically it could bring down
the heat on a Chile. Well. Also, the word tomato,
and probably the reason we associate it so much with

(03:21):
Meso America and the Aztecs is the noato word, which
means round and plump. And so then when the Spaniards arrived,
they called it. They couldn't say the word, would like
I can't say the word and they change it. Yeah,

(03:41):
the tomato, soy, It was basically referred to many round
and plump fruits. The red tomato is called the ht
the green tomato is called the total. But even today
in Mexico, I grew up just calling the and but
in other parts to Mexico the red tomatoes, green tomatoes

(04:03):
the too. It's so confusing when I'm in Mexico and
I'm trying to cook or asking asking, uh, somebody, hey,
can you pick me up some tomatoes? I go, can
you you know? And they go and they bring me
green ones, and I go, no, no, hie? Which is
the red one? Yeah, it's confusing. They have such a
different flavors. The green tomato that has the husk, it's

(04:27):
very um, a little bit sour. It's great for saltzas.
Green saltzas I love. And the red one is much milder.
I make an amazing tomato salsa fresh or cooked. I
cooked my salsa. I roast them and then I blend
them and then I cook it. So I do I
do both. So if the tomato is endemic to Messo America,

(04:59):
how did it get to Europe? Okay? And did it
get a bad reputation? The tomato goes to Europe and
gets a bad reputation. Why this is a crazy story,
like so many ingredients that have such crazy story. So
reached Europe around fifteen forty via city Yam right. It
was the center for international trade, especially with Italy. Naples

(05:21):
was part of Spain. Right, so it made its way
from Mexico to Spain, and then it made its way
to Italy. So according to Andrew Smith who's this wrote
this book which is amazing, it's called the tomato in America.
One of the earliest known references to the tomato was
made by an Italian Italian herbalist named Bertietto Manthioli. He

(05:44):
refers to it as a golden apple and it was
a nightshade and related to a man drake, which was
an Old World food that was known for an aphrodisiac.
This man drake was basically used as a as a
love potion. And then in England around the same time,
there is this herbalist named John Girard. He published a

(06:06):
book called The History of Plants, and he tells us
that the plant is poisonous. Why would he say that
if he's an herbalist like he should know that that
it's not. They weren't really sure what they were what
they were doing. He considered the whole plant to be
of rank and stinking savor. And he talks about He
says that the Spaniards and the Italians were eating it,

(06:29):
but that it was poisonous. Oh, because the leaves, the
leaves and stock are toxic, but not the fruit. But
not the fruit, but this false opinion of the tomato,
whatever it prevailed. One thing that I find the most
interesting about all of this is that by the seventeen hundreds,
and we're talking, you know, almost two hundred years later,

(06:51):
many Europeans they were terrified of the tomato because aristocrats
would eat from pewter plates, so they got sick and
a lot of them died after eating tomatoes. But it
wasn't the tomato itself. It was the acid and the
tomato that caused lead to leach from the pewter plates.
So they were getting lead poisoning, but they didn't It

(07:14):
wasn't the tomato. It was the lead. But they didn't
really put two and two to anything that they would eat.
They would be poisoned. They could put eggs on that
plate and they would be poisoned. Yeah, but maybe it's
it's the acid and the tomato that really got it
caused of poixactly exactly. So it wasn't until that late
eighteen hundreds that the popularity in Europe began to grow.

(07:37):
But people in Spain and people in Italy were eating
the tomato. Don't go anywhere. We've got more on the
history of the luscious tomato when we get back, stay
with us. The earliest known printed recipe for tomato appears

(08:02):
in sixteen ninety four The Modern Steward by Antonio Latini,
and he did a sauce. It was a tomato sauce
called Spanish style, but it was the sauce was used
on meats, and so in Italy, the people who started
eating tomatoes because there was nothing else available. It was
actually a food for the poor, and they couldn't eat

(08:23):
all of it because they couldn't preserve it or store it.
So they started making these sauces to put on pasta
and pizza so that they could use up the tomatoes
because you know, they don't they don't last very long
if you get a good ripe tomato. So by the
nineteenth century Italians this is where the popularity of Italian
sauce was born for pasta pizza, because they would mix

(08:46):
them with beans and other foods and that it's very cool.
And this guy Antonio Latini was amazing, like he has
this earliest printed recipe for tomatoes. He also gives us
the first printed recipe for survey. I think it's too
were interesting that he calls it tomato sauce. Spanish child,
because we don't actually see a tomato recipe in Spain

(09:09):
until seventeen forty five. But so then what about the
tomato in the US. What's the first known reference? So
the first known reference in colonial America is also from
an English herbalist. This is a man named William Salmon
or Salmon, I'm not sure you pronounce the last name,
but Nolochia of seventeen ten, and he talks about the

(09:30):
tomatoes being cultivated in the Carolinas. So this is interesting,
like how did the tomato get there? Maybe they were
brought over by Spanish, French, or Caribbean settlers. Maybe it
was also that it slaved Africans introduced the tomato to
the region because they were responsible for cooking on southern plantations.

(09:50):
So there are various theories as to how the tomato
got here, but it likely came to the US via
Old World, not via Mexico. It was it the America
that made it possible to commercially process canned tomatoes so
that they were available all year round. And so this
is what this was the entrance of Campbells condensed tomatoes,

(10:13):
soup and the food market in eighteen sixty early because
they popularize Yes, I didn't know can did I? But
I have to say, actually, I want to say one thing.
It was the French that it that invented canning. It
was Campbell's in eighteen sixty nine that would popularize the
mass production of canned tomato formats and the sale of
canned tomatoes. So Americans weren't just eating fresh tomatoes and

(10:36):
including them and the recipes, but they were using canned
tomatoes to make these meals. And canned food was obviously
shelf stable, so it required no storage, and it could
be eaten year round, and it lasted a lot longer.
So this was pretty genius of absolutely. Yeah. And so
this whole concept of canning really revolutionize the food world
in general, not just for tomatoes. And this is a

(10:58):
technique that was developed, you know, in France, but even
you know before this, we see you know, Mary Randolph
this cookbook eighteen twenty four. She has seventeen different tomato recipes,

(11:18):
including an early American recipe for ketchup, which is interesting
speaking of ketchup, because ketchup originally is not based from tomatoes.
The ancestor of modern ketchup was tomato free, where did
it come from. It comes from an ancient Chinese sauce,
a fermented soybeans and fish sauce called kets up or

(11:40):
goat chop, So that's where the word ketchup comes from.
But the original ketchup has no tomato in it. But
the word and the sauce were brought to Britain in
the early seventeen hundreds, but since they didn't have any soybeans,
they started using anchovies or mushrooms or walnuts or oysters.
American colonists brought these recipes with them to the US

(12:03):
and experimented with what they had. So they were first
using apples and then they were using beans. And it
wasn't until eighteen twelve that a Philadelphia scientist named James
Mesee that he developed the first tomato ketchup made from
love apples as they were still called. And then and

(12:25):
then John Hines, as in Hinz Ketchup, later introduced a
recipe which included vinegar, brown sugar, and spices, and he
pioneered the use of the glass bottles. So Hines was
the first to add vinegar, which acted as a preservative,
and that was an eighteen seventy six and two Date

(12:45):
is the best selling brand of ketchup and the best ketchup.
It really is. I love it. It's the best ketch
because it has vinegar. I love a vinegary ketchup. Now, today,

(13:06):
the tomato market, which includes fresh and processed, is estimated
to be worth about three point eight billion dollars, So
it's it makes tomatoes one of the most consumed produce
in America, second only to potatoes. So potatoes is the
number one consumed produce in America and number two is tomatoes.

(13:27):
That's interesting. And it's also one of the most genetically
modified vegetables for vegetables, which is why sometimes we take
a taste tomato and it tastes meally and it just
or doesn't or just taste like water, doesn't taste like nothing.
It's because of this, it's because it's been modified. Well,
there's many there's what thousands of tomato varieties, and a

(13:50):
lot of them are hybrids, thousands, thousands, And that's why
you're right. That's why some of them have no flavor,
and some of them are large and sturdy, like the
beef steak. I think the beef steak tomato has an
air flavor. They just have a good texture. But the
air good texture. Yeah, but the airloom I love. I
love the airloom because they're I also feel like I

(14:11):
love all the colors that they come in and their taste.
It's like it's just perfect if you lightly salted, it's
just so good. A good airloom tomato is just oh,
it's like heaven. Different colors like purple and green and
yellow and all these colors. Yeah, absolutely, and different shapes different.
I love the different sizes, super bumpy, I love them.

(14:34):
You know, I use a lot of I actually use
a lot of Rama tomatoes. They're also known as like
the plum. They look like a plum size because they're
sweet and juicy. I use those for for all my
Italian sauces, Palma bolan asy like I use I use
what do you use for your h roma? It's usually
what I get drama, and then in the summers I
get the airloom tomatoes. I love that Marzano is known

(14:58):
as the rolls Royce of tomatoes because I do mix
Rama and Marsana when I'm making my Italian sauces because
they're sweeter. Best tomatoes I've ever had were in Sicily.
They tasted like, oh really, oh my gosh, I feel
like they had been injected with tomato flavor. There were
sweet and a little acidic and just amazing. I think

(15:20):
it's just the volcanic soil there is just oh, it
gives everything such an incredible, incredible flavor. Do you know
that that China is the world's largest tomato producer. Mexico
is the leading exporter of fresh tomatoes to the United States,
So if you're an American, you're probably eating a Mexican tomato.

(15:45):
More on the history of the tomato after the break,
don't go anywhere. Welcome back to hunger Reistory. Chef Hilberto
Cetina is making waves creating unique flavors at his restaurant
Holbosch in Los Angeles, California, so much so that in

(16:09):
twenty twenty one, Holbosch received the Michelin bib Gormand Award,
a really big deal in the culinary world. Here he
is giving us even more history on the tomato, sharing
a childhood memory eating tamlito, and giving us his thoughts
on how the tomato is a jack of all trades.

(16:32):
My name is Hiluerto Sea. I'm the chef and owner
of Holbosch. Hohlbosch is a Mexican seafood or Marisco stand
that focuses on just regional coastal Mexican cooking, prepared with
whatever ingredients are available to us here locally in southern California,
which is a lot and fantastic. Comes from South America,

(17:00):
you know, the Andies. It's believed somewhere between Bolivia, Colombia,
Cual or Peru. And just like the chileno, indeed, it
was brought over to Messo America by via birds. The
original tomato from the Andes is very different from what
we know of as a tomato today, so it was
a very small fruit. Through selective breeding, the Aztecs cultivated

(17:24):
it and turned it into something that was beautiful, big
and plump, and it was used in braises, and the
braises were dishes for the for the wealthy, and for
the royalty and for the politicians. It was not common
food like la tortilla or or tamal, and most popularly

(17:47):
it was used for something called a pipan or a pepian,
which is a pumpkin seed or other kind of nut
based with tomato and dry chiless and they would make
you know, a nice thick, kind of velvety sauce that
they would braisee wild game and the rich people would
have that. So tomato is super important in our kitchen.

(18:17):
Tomato is versatile more than anything. It is a jack
of all trades. It does all kinds of things. So
it can be as simple as a slice of tomato
as a garnish on something. Think about let's go American
food here, think about a hamburger, a nice thick slice
of tomato. Or in my part of Mexico where I'm from,

(18:38):
which is Yucatan, you put a nice slice of tomat
on your pinuccio and it just completes it, right, the pinuccio,
the tomato, the avocado, and that gives you the perfect bite.
But it's also wonderful for obviously for my disco's right,
that vegetable freshness, that vegetable crunch of the raw tomato,

(18:59):
the raw onions, cilantro, cucumbers and avocado to balance out
the protein heavy ceviche. Right, So a seviche without any vegs,
it's you know, it's basically just sashimi. It's just you know,
raw fish, and you add all these vegetables to it,
and also, you know Chiles and your tostada, you're really

(19:21):
creating something with the flavors of the region and making
something completely different from you know, just raw fish or
fish cured in lime juice and then in the in
the hot kitchen against super versatile. The base of our
food in a lot of parts of Mexico, in Yucatan,
definitely the base of our food is sofritos. We use

(19:43):
it for soups, we use it as a thickenerer, we
use it for you know, rices and noodles, and the
sofrito gives you a nice, deep developed flavor because it's
you're cooking it in layers. You start with garlic and
onion with a little bit of oil. You cook that
down until it's caramelized, so you have that layer of
flavor there, the caramelization of the onions and the garlic.

(20:05):
Then you add tomatoes and peppers to that and you
cook those down and you just start developing this this
this wonderful bass that is a good starting point for
wherever you want to go, either be it a soup
or a sauce or whatever you're going to do with it.
And classical Mexican dishes like pscalo la vera Cruzana sauce
is a sofrito and in Yucatana is just basically a

(20:32):
sofrito that you add calmari ink or octopus ink two
and you to make that traditional dish so very important
in our food. And you know, when I think about
tomato growing up in Yucatan, I immediately go to artamos.

(20:53):
It's just so it's so ingrained in our memory as Mexicans.
Anytime you would go to the celebration and you're excited
and you're there and your friends are there, there's always
a tama with a little just a very simple salce,
all right. You boil the tomatoes with maybe maybe a
bay leaf, garlic, some onion, and then you blend it

(21:17):
up and season it with salt and that's it. And
it's a really pure, very simple sauce that gives the
tamal an added layer of flavor. You know, the thamal
usually does is lacking in acidity, in brightness, and sharpness,
and that just gives it that. I would say that's
the number one flavor memory tamal, maybe a little bit

(21:41):
of cake on the side. I love tomatoes, love It's
very one of the very few things that I can
actually grow successfully. I grow these little cherry tomatoes and
in the middle of the summer, like putting, oh, cherry
tomato in your mouth, wore from the sun. The way
that it just pops in your mouth. It's like a

(22:04):
little taste of sunshine. I love it. What about you
do like tomatoes? I like most tomatoes. It's so funny
because I was in Wahaka and you'll see on searching
for Mexico there's an episode of this woman who's like
the tomato Queen, and we must have had a hundred
different species tomatoes, and it was she did this tomato

(22:27):
salad with this I need to get the dressing because
it was. It was like the simplest, most complex dressing
that she poured on top. But you know they were purple,
they were red, they were orange, they were green, they
were black, they were I mean it was big, small,
you know, bumpy, smooth. It was. It was her tomato salad.

(22:47):
And I almost died, like I was like I could
this could be my last meal on earth. It was
so good. And then I also love bantot in Spain
so delicious, yeah, which is like this crushed ripe tomatoes
with garlic and se salt, and you drown it in
that Spanish olive oil and then you spread it on
the bread. It is it is so good and so simple.

(23:10):
It's so simple, I know that one. So simple. I
also do like a bushetta, which is similar like chopping
you know, great tomatoes, rama tomatoes with garlic and salt
and olive oil and putting it on top of a christini.
You know, like that too. I love that. I love freshness.
I don't like tomatoes in a hamburger or a sandwich really,

(23:34):
I don't know why. Yeah, or not too much in
a salad either. I don't love them too much in
a salad either. But yeah, I do love like a
really good tomato. It's just sometimes, I mean, when I
was growing up, I feel like the tomatoes were just
kind of mealy because I think they've just been refrigerated.
But now you could find such really good tomatoes. I

(23:55):
just really like them, just sliced with olive oil and
some salt. Yes, exactly, that's what I'm saying. I could
have a tomato salad. I could eat tomatoes like the
slice airm like. I could have an heirloom tomato with
salt and olive oil and just eat it like an apple.
I mean, I I can do that, but I don't
want it in my salad. That weird? Are we weird?

(24:18):
Maybe a little bit, But that's okay. Do you have
a tomato recipe you love? I have a great gaspacho recipe.
Ah no, I hate cold soup, so gaspacho falls in.
Oh God, I have to make you. I need it.
I think you'll like it. I don't pre bread and it.
It's very simple. It's just fresh tomato, like super ripe tomato.

(24:41):
Like it's the tomato if it looks like it's about
to get little bugs growing on it, like super super ripe.
Those are the tomatoes that are I really really juicy,
that I wouldn't eat for anything else. Cucumber, green bell, pepper,
olive oil, a tiny bit of garlic, salt, and a
little bit of water and sherry, like a really good
sherry vinegar. I haven't met a gaspot you, I like

(25:03):
you haven't met mine. It was so funny because I
thought we were going to settle the debate of it
is it a fruit or vegetable? But we did not.
It's both. It's both, but I use it as a
I used it as a vegetable, but hey, it's a both.
It's really both. Thank y'all for listening. Don't forget to subscribe.

(25:29):
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