Tomatoes for Two

 Sujata Massey

It’s entirely possible to buy tomatoes in many parts of the world without being able to speak the language. In Spanish and German, it’s called a tomate. In Hindi, they say tamaatar, and in Gujarati, tamota. In Turkish, domades. 

 

There seems to be one theme emerging, but there’s a second linguistic direction followed by those who speak romance languages. The French named the tomato pomme d’amour (love apple). The aphrodisiac philosphy carries over to the name pomidor in Russian and pomodoro in Italian.

 

I was born in England so I used to say toe-mah-toe, but now that I’m in the US it’s toe-may-toe. Doesn’t sound as romantic, but I do believe tomatoes are the binder of happy meals and marriages. 

 

Last Sunday, my husband Tony and I agreed it would be a good idea to buy 30 pounds of Roma tomatoes at the farmers market in order to stock up for the fall and winter. 

I actually only needed about five pounds of tomatoes to make a highly spiced Indian tomato chutney.

On the other hand, Tony needed a huge amount. He wanted to make a few gallons of a pureed tomato, garlic and onion sauce that could be a base for many dishes. He’s been making this sauce for us for years and ensures a good store for most of the year by carefully pouring 2-cup quantities and freezing them. But now that he’s got his own vacuum-sealing equipment, he could do it in air-tight blocks to be stored in our large standing freezer (another recent husband purchase). 

 

I don’t know if you are getting the dynamic of our 31-year-marriage yet, but it involves what you might call differences of opinion.

 

Two people, two tomato-buying expeditions ensued. On a Friday, I bought 5 pounds of Roma tomatoes from a roadside farm stand. On Sunday, when we went to the Baltimore Farmers Market, where I found the only farmer selling bushels and larger of tomatoes, including Romas, which everyone knows are the preferred sauce-making tomato due to their lower level of water content. I paid for the beauties, and Tony lugged a 25-lb cardboard box packed with Romas to our car. When he got home, he located the cotton gloves he’d wear under vinyl gloves to protect his hands from slipper tomato juice, and he located the vacuum sealing machine and roll of heavy-duty freezer plastic. The knives came out, and operation tomato sauce was underway.

 

At the start of marriage in our twenties, I’d have been at Tony’s side helping him blanch a few hundred Roma tomatoes in lightly simmering water, and then deseed, as well as the eyewatering task of chopping onions. But Tony’s cooking style is longer and more perfectionist than mine, so I’ve leave him to cook some dishes undisturbed.

 

When his sauce was on its first simmer (yes, it gets cooked twice!) and all his rigamarole was in the dishwasher, I returned to the kitchen to start prepping. My recipe was a lot simpler, and I had many fewer tomatoes to chop. Still, I had to do some math to calculate the right amount of vinegar and sugar and garlic and ginger to use. Just slivering the fresh ginger and garlic took me an hour and a half. 

 

I am always looking for shortcuts, so I decided to try simmering my chutney in a slow cooker. After a night’s cooking on low, I was disappointed that the temperature was just a bit too low for the chutney to thicken. So, I poured the warm mixture of tomatoes, spices and vinegar into a ceramic-coated Dutch oven, and after I brought it to ha happy boil, I lowered the temperature to simmer and partially covered the pot.  About four hours later, the red chunks swimming in vinegar had reduced by half into a rich reddish brown, sticky concoction. I added just a tiny bit more sugar and salt to taste, and the chutney was ready to cool in the fridge.

 

At the end of our tomato weekend, the kitchen smelled of vinegar and garlic, and we were happily exhausted. Both tomato recipes are listed on my website. Tony’s sauce is European, and my chutney is Indian, but we are united as a couple who will share these savory tastes over the upcoming six months. 

 

Here’s what one can do with a simple tomato-onion-garlic sauce:

Add Italian herbs and make a marinara sauce

Add ground meat and make it a ragu

Add cumin and chilies and other ingredients to make a Middle Eastern, Mexican or Indian gravy to blanket a baked dish or curry

Add milk or cream to make cream of tomato soup

 

 

Here are some ways to use a tomato chutney:

Serve it as an accompaniment to a classic Indian meal

Add it to a cheese, vegetable or chicken sandwich

Serve it with grilled meat or fish

Peel hardboiled eggs, split them, and put a dash of chutney down the middle

 

Bon Appetit!

With this cow I do thee wed

It is traditional custom in southern Africa for a prospective husband to honor his future wife’s family with a gift of cows.  The practice is called lobola.  The cows themselves and the process leading to the exchange are designed to bring the bridal couple’s families closer together, so that as a unit they will be supportive of the newlyweds, and later of their offspring.

Indigenous African nduni cow

The process itself is akin to what happens in a corporate merger or acquisition.  The bridegroom-to-be’s family appoints negotiating representatives, often the father and uncles, who approach the family of the bride-to-be to negotiate a fair price.  From what I understand, these negotiations can often take several sessions and involve a haggling over the value of the cattle themselves, as well as the attributes of the young lady.

As Owethu Kheli wrote recently in the Mail&Guardian Online (http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-17-tricky-art-of-negotiating-lobola) (I’ve omitted a few paragraphs):

Indigenous African nduni cow

“I was not allowed into the house where my fiancée's family and my "lawyers" discussed this "out-of-court settlement". Being present is like contempt of court.

I drove my team to her parents' house. It took three meetings for the two families to finally sign the deal. The first meeting, according to the briefing my "lawyers" gave me afterwards, was a good one. "It's a smooth process," said my dad's cousin. Okay, tell me more, I said.

Her family had accepted our merger of equals proposition. But? They had not done due diligence and could not put cattle or a monetary value on the daughter.

Cow!

I wanted an easy deal: a reasonable lobola, then my family and I would pay for the wedding. Well, my lawyers claimed that they suggested that to her family. Either my darling's family was not too keen, or did not realise how sweet that deal would be for them.

But they played hard to get over those three meetings, according to my team. At some stage I thought that I would go to the house next door to find a wife. Or I would marry a white woman, whose dad would have the pain of funding a lavish wedding, all without lobola.

Finally, after three meetings, my deal was sealed in the most welcome and fulfilling of ways.

I sneaked into the final meeting. My lawyers are rebels -- they break tradition, generally. They said I should walk in with them this time round to experience the process for myself. The other parties probed skillfully as though they did not know.

One of them asked of my legal team: "Gentlemen, how come there are four of you, when in the past meetings there were only three?" My dad's cousin, knowing we would all be fined for this transgression, introduced me as their driver.

Everybody laughed.”

In this case, the negotiations went well.

However, as you would expect, traditions like this are under pressure.

First, there are logistical pressures.  It is hard to imagine an urban couple driving a small herd of cattle through the streets of Johannesburg or Cape Town from one family to another, let alone keeping the cattle on an apartment’s veranda or a house’s small garden.  This inconvenience has been addressed by exchanging the cash value of the cattle - hence the need for the negotiators to reach agreement on the cows’ values.  This can cost the bridegroom a lot of money – which means that the couple can start life together with a large hole in their bank balance.

Second, the switch from cows to cash has caused some families to focus more on the money and less on the tradition underlying lobola.  Some women whose lobola has been paid in cash wonder what agreements were reached.  Some feel that their negotiators negotiated their lives away, giving the man the right to tell the woman what to do and where to live – that, in fact, lobola now symbolizes a purchase, not the joining of families.

Third, many proponents of lobola argue that the divorce rates amongst groups that seal a union with lobola are lower than typical western rates.  However, more and more young men now say that the price to pay, in cattle or money, is too great.  More than half of young men today believe that lobola discourages marriage.  And guess what?  Single mothers and absentee fathers are becoming the norm.  And the likely ones to suffer are the children.

Michael and I are fortunate that our Detective Kubu’s father, Wilmon, was an astute negotiator.  The lobola Kubu paid for Joy was fair, and the two are a couple of equals.  Sort of.

Stan - Thursday