Joe McNamee: My tomatoes are thriving in this summer heat, offering a taste of my childhood
Yes, they too are guzzling up water, but early taste tests are already promising.
I am sitting at my office desk in shorts and T-shirt, windows and doors wide open, blinds drawn to darken all rooms, yet the blistering heat still has me like a veritable sweat fountain.
Most of the plants — all in containers — on my roof terrace garden fare little better, struggling to stay green despite nightly watering. Two tomato plants are the exception. They began life inside, near a large south-facing window, but that eventually became too much and I moved them outside, where they are luxuriating and thriving in the heat like the reigning champion at a Hawaiian tropic tanning competition.
Yes, they too are guzzling up water, but early taste tests are already promising fruit that will be veritable sugar bombs of flavour if this weather keeps up, a rarity in a country where most of our tomatoes are grown indoors in polytunnels and glasshouses.
Though I will most likely bring them back indoors over the coming weeks of our inevitably variable Irish summer, those al fresco days of outdoor “tanning” will only enhance the plants’ health, vitality and flavour.
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I pause for lunch, specifically an old-school tomato sandwich, nothing but bread (crusty white from Seeds), butter (Gloun Cross), my own tomatoes, and a little salt. It is simple and delicious, a taste of my childhood when the only tomatoes we ate were seasonal and Irish, and there were far more growers — growers who also earned a fair price for their produce.
A prohibition on below-cost selling since 1987 came to an end in 2006 with the Competition (Amendment) Act, and the bottom effectively fell out of the market for the already struggling Irish growers.
Despite a stipulation whereby manufacturers or suppliers get to specify minimum resale prices for their goods or produce, the reality is very different.
Supermarkets regularly retail Irish produce for less than what it costs to produce, and I have met large-scale Irish horticulture producers supplying giant multiples who now regard themselves as little more than indentured slaves, with prices largely dictated to them, even as the major multiples festoon their supermarkets with images of Irish farmers and growers for advertising purposes.
Meanwhile, the amount of Irish-produced produce on sale is minuscule in comparison to the overwhelming amount of imported produce.
Mick Kelly, of GIY, recently pointed out that there are just five major tomato growers remaining who supply Irish supermarkets, and most of that supply is retailed under the various multiples’ own brands.
Though tomatoes are now available all year round, in our home, we simply don’t bother with tomatoes out of season, instead getting our fix of that powerful tomato-derived antioxidant, lycopene, from tinned or preserved tomatoes.
(Curiously, there is a greater bioavailability of lycopene once the tomato is cooked, up to five times more than raw; conversely, as lycopene is fat-soluble, serving tomato raw with plenty of good extra virgin olive oil makes lycopene more readily available and provides more fibre in your diet.)
If we have to buy tomatoes, we only buy seasonal Irish, but the bulk of our fresh tomatoes are purchased from farmers’ markets or from small-scale growers, infinitely superior and, in a good summer, heritage tomatoes are often a match for tomatoes from southern Europe.
Good Irish tomatoes are very definitely out there. Kenneth Keavey, of Galway’s Green Earth Organics, reckons he is one of at least 30 Irish small-scale growers of tomatoes seeking alternative routes to market, and he produces three tonnes of cherry tomatoes from one single, large polytunnel each year.
A government with vision and foresight would instantly ban below-cost selling and move forcefully to give Irish-based horticultural producers all the support needed, including subsidies, to re-establish a robust and thriving native Irish produce sector and enhance our food sovereignty.
As temperatures in Europe rise twice as fast as the rest of the planet, the multiples may wind up no longer able to offer even those watery, flavourless imported tomatoes.
Then maybe we’ll all go back to eating flavourful Irish tomatoes, bought at a price that ensures the survival of the Irish producer.
Yes, it may be perverse to mention Christmas during a heatwave, but the supremely organised Waterford Winterval Christmas Market is getting ready well in advance. Specifically, it is calling out for Irish premium food and beverage producers, along with crafters and makers, to apply to trade at the monster Winterval Christmas Market (weekends, from Nov 13-Dec 23), which takes over the Déise capital in the run-up to Christmas.
- Further details: Winterval.ie
Mark Moriarty, highly popular Irish TV chef and author of very approachable cookbooks, is opening a Dublin restaurant. Yet Mark Moriarty Studio, which opens in August, is not exactly a restaurant as we know it, only open to the general public every Friday, offering a set tasting menu over two sittings, just 20 guests at each.
Developed in partnership with IPUT Real Estate Dublin as part of their flagship Wilton Park development, the interior will serve as a high-end hospitality venue, test kitchen, TV/podcast set and stylish event space, which will no doubt do thriving business with private corporate events.
Is this yet another future direction for restaurants in an increasingly turbulent hospitality world?
