The Week My House Smelt of Tomatoes | Preserving the Sicilian Harvest
Preserving tomatoes in Sicily doesn’t have to be a laborious task and during the summer my entire house begins to smell of tomatoes and basil.
It’s not the fresh, green scent of vines warming in the morning sun, but the rich, sweet aroma that drifts through every room as pots simmer gently for hours on the stove. It clings to the curtains, escapes through open windows, and lingers long after the last jar has been sealed. It is the smell of preserving the harvest, of putting summer away for another season.
This year has been one of my best tomato harvests yet.
I planted several different varieties, each with its own purpose in the kitchen. The Sunny tomatoes have been wonderfully dependable, producing large, round salad tomatoes that are perfect sliced thickly with a drizzle of olive oil and a scattering of basil. They have been generous plants, rewarding me with basket after basket of bright, golden-red fruit.
The plum tomatoes have become the workhorses of the kitchen. Firm, fleshy and full of flavour, they have spent much of the past week bubbling away in enormous pots as I transformed them into bottled tomatoes, silky passata and thick tomato paste.
Tomato paste is perhaps the most demanding of all. There is no rushing it. It must be stirred and watched for hours as the water slowly evaporates and the flavours become deeper, sweeter and more concentrated. It is patient work, but when you finally spoon that deep crimson paste into jars, every hour seems worthwhile.
Then there are my little Datterini tomatoes.
These tiny, incredibly sweet tomatoes are made for drying. Last week I cut them in half, sprinkled them generously with salt and laid them out on trays beneath the fierce Sicilian sun. The trays were covered with fine netting—not so much to keep away flies, but to stop the determined wasps that always seem to know exactly when fruit is ripening.
The heat was relentless. In just two days they had shrunk into intensely flavoured little jewels, ready to be packed into jars and covered with olive oil. They will be a welcome reminder of summer when winter finally arrives.
Yesterday it was the turn of the larger plum tomatoes.
They too were salted and arranged carefully on drying trays, but the weather has softened slightly this week. The days are still warm, but no longer scorching, and because these tomatoes are much larger they will need several more days before they are ready. Every evening I carry the trays back indoors, unwilling to let the cool night air undo the day’s work. Morning after morning they return to the sunshine, continuing the slow transformation that people have relied upon for centuries in this part of Sicily.
Not everything has been perfect.
The intense heat has taken its toll on some of the plum tomatoes, scorching the fruit and hastening the end of a few plants. After a month of producing almost continuously, many have simply reached the end of their season. Gardening has a way of reminding us that nature always has the final word.
Still, with such an abundant harvest, it would be difficult to complain.
Nothing is wasted here. Tomatoes that have split, become blemished or suffered a touch of blight are happily devoured by the chickens, who wait rather impatiently whenever they see me carrying a basket through the garden.
And then there are the tomatoes I deliberately leave behind.
A few are allowed to fall quietly onto the soil beneath the vines. Over the months they will soften, decay and release their seeds back into the earth. Nature has been perfecting this method for thousands of years, and I have learned not to interfere too much. If all goes well, next spring tiny volunteer tomato seedlings will appear, eager to begin the cycle all over again.
There is something deeply satisfying about preserving food this way.
Every jar of passata, every bottle of dried tomatoes resting beneath olive oil, every spoonful of tomato paste represents far more than ingredients. They are days spent beneath the Sicilian sun, stained hands, steaming kitchens and the quiet of seasonal work.
Long after the last tomato plant has withered and the vegetable beds have been cleared, those jars will line the pantry shelves like little bottles of sunshine. On a cold winter evening, when a pot of pasta needs only the simplest of sauces, opening one will release the scent of August all over again.
And for just a moment, summer will return.
Kate
Kate writes Letters from Sicily from her coastal farm on the island, where the olive trees are heavy with fruit in October, six cats supervise everything, Fergus the Jack Russell believes every visitor has arrived especially to see him, and another letter is already beginning to take shape.
