🍅 Tomato season is here: Boulder readers share their favorite ways to enjoy it

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We’ve happily arrived at peak field tomato season in Boulder County, and our readers are sharing their favorite ways to enjoy, prepare and preserve everything from grape tomatoes to beefsteaks. Plus: The Boulder County Farmers Markets shares a recipe for shishito-topped tostadas. And celebrate National Watermelon Day on Aug. 3 by juicing a watermelon, freezing the juice in cubes and using them to chill a glass of lemonade or iced tea.

— John Lehndorff

While the recent sweaty, blistering heat wave has been hellish for humans and most other living things, tomatoes have been soaking up, basking in and otherwise relishing the solar radiation. Tomatoes, along with chilies, will take all the sun they can get.

I’ve got four varieties of heirloom tomatoes, Lycopersicon esculentum, including tiny cherry and plum tomatoes, ripening in my patio garden. It will be a week or more before any are ready to enjoy, but I wasn’t going to wait to have my first tomato sandwich of the summer. (See below.)

During Boulder County’s annual tomato window of opportunity, from late July to mid-September, many varieties begin filling local farm stands. To take advantage of the season, I asked friends and readers to share their favorite ways to enjoy, cook, prepare and preserve tomatoes.

What to do with all those tomatoes?

Many readers insisted that the simplest tomato dishes are the best.

One confessed:

“I know I sound like I’m a six-year-old, but I love picking the tomatoes straight off the vine as they’ve been warmed by the sun and pop them in my mouth. The warm, sweet juice that explodes in my mouth sends a taste sensation to my senses and takes me back to my childhood.”

Most readers seem to prefer their fresh fruit sliced and sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and maybe a drizzle of oil. Others look forward to the first true BLT of the year or bruschetta: sourdough toast topped with basil, garlic and tomato, and possibly some creamy burrata. Other suggestions included sprinkling Trader Joe’s Green Goddess seasoning on a sliced tomato sandwich or spreading the bread with fresh basil-infused mayo.

One friend says he enjoys fresh tomatoes as the fruit, not the vegetable, that they truly are. He likes them sprinkled Japanese-style with a little sugar, not salt.

An out-of-state correspondent writes:

“My summer favorite is sautéed Aosta Valley tomatoes in olive oil with eggplant, peppers and other fresh veggies. These tomatoes are small and thin-skinned, so the whole tomato goes into the primavera over pasta.”

Along similar lines, another reader likes to combine shallots, roasted garlic, blistered local tomatoes, preserved lemon, thyme, roasted chicken and butter in a sauce to toss with fresh fettuccine.

Chef Paolo Neville of Boulder’s Salt Restaurant notes:

“I do a quick fry on grape tomatoes. The skins pop off and I put them in an ice bath. I then dress them liberally with olive oil, a little salt and fresh herbs and serve as a salad.”

Gazpacho, essentially a salad in a soup bowl, is also a popular seasonal passion. Boulder’s Escoffier School of Culinary Arts offers a primer and recipe for making the perfect chilled tomato gazpacho.

Other readers enjoy their tomatoes in galettes, tomato and peach terrines and grape tomato confit preserved in garlic-infused olive oil.

Grape tomatoes soaking up the sun on a Louisville patio. Credit: John Lehndorff

Finding local tomatoes at farm stands

I checked out the first field tomatoes of the season for sale at Munson’s Farm Stand, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The folks running the stand said that regular customers use the tomatoes for everything from tomato galettes — savory open-faced pies — to peach and tomato salad. The stand almost always has some green tomatoes for another seasonal passion: fried green tomatoes.

Some years back, Boulder’s Harlequin’s Gardens hosted an annual Taste of Tomato featuring upwards of 75 varieties cut up for tasting. It was a great event and a revelation to realize how many different tomato tastes exist. This summer, visit the local farmers markets and many roadside farm stands to pick up a selection of varietals, each with distinctive flavors, aromas and names such as Black Cherry, Mortgage Lifter, Black Krim and Aunt Ruby’s German Green. Slice them up and stage your own tomato tasting.

Freshly harvested field-grown tomatoes at Munson’s Farm Stand in Boulder. Credit: John Lehndorff

Saving summer tomato flavor for later

Farm stands often have cases of tomato seconds, which are slightly bruised but otherwise delicious fruit that can be preserved for winter use. Readers offered these suggestions:

“Canning tomatoes is the only practical way to deal with a massive surge in ripe tomatoes. Unlike freezing, it doesn’t take up expensive space or go bad if you have an outage. Unlike immediately eating them, it’s physically possible.”

If nothing else, just pick the tomatoes and toss them in a bag in your freezer. You can pull them out for soups, salsas and sauces.

Tomatoes can also be dried in a dehydrator. One reader suggested oven-drying cherry tomatoes, which makes them quite sweet. Batches of tomato juice, sauce or purée can be frozen in vacuum-sealed bags.

There comes a time every summer when a little voice whispers: “John: How about a tomato sandwich?”

A sandwich this simple is only worth eating when the ripe (but not mushy) beefsteak and other tomatoes start flooding in from the fields. I grabbed some perfect farm stand tomatoes and picked up garlic bagels from Fleishman’s Bagel and Delicatessen. The popular food truck formerly found on 30th Street has moved nearby to 2510 47th St., in front of Vision Quest Brewery and Boulder Fermentation Supply.

I buttered the toasted bagel halves, added a slice of warm, ripe tomato sprinkled with salt and topped it with a few basil leaves from the garden. Enjoyed on my patio, it tasted the way summer feels.

Tomato bagel sandwich using a farm stand tomato, basil leaves, smoked salt and butter on a toasted Fleishman’s garlic bagel. Dessert: Half a ripe Palisade peach. Credit: John Lehndorff

Rising Tiger pops up at Wild Bloom Coffee Collective

One of my favorite farmers market vendors, Longmont’s Rising Tiger, is known for its amazing scallion pancake breakfast wraps. Chef Devin Keopraphay’s “Asian-ish” treats will now be available during Rising Tiger’s pop-up residency, 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays at Wild Bloom Coffee Collective, 1139 Francis St. No reservations. Best advice: Get there early!

Boulder’s All Roads Shelter is asking the local culinary community for help with an unusual need:

“Oven mitts are an item we are very unlikely to acquire from any other donation source, so we usually have to resort to buying them. Please consider donating a pair of high-heat commercial oven mitts, or ordering them and sending them to the Shelter for its kitchen staff.”

We have all enjoyed some of those frozen pizza evenings, but the pies are often less than memorable. The Niche Market, 3701 Canfield Street in Boulder, has raised the bar. The shop is the only place where you can pick up ready-to-heat artisan creations from Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage. Audrey Jane’s makes classic pizzas with naturally fermented, chewy, light crusts, then freezes them for home enjoyment. Proceeds from sales at The Niche Market support Meals on Wheels of Boulder.

August is packed with major Colorado food gatherings

A global feast commences Aug. 1 at the 5th annual Denver International Festival in the Five Points neighborhood. Fare from dozens of immigrant communities in the metro area will be showcased.

Guided mushroom forays, workshops with noted mycologists, wild food feasts and cooking classes are part of the Eagle Mushroom & Wild Food Festival Aug. 21-23 in Eagle near Vail.

(Get your upcoming food event, festival or class listed free on Boulder Reporting Lab using the self-submission form here.)

Orion Aon of Forage Colorado will lead fungi forays focusing on mushroom identification at the Eagle Mushroom & Wild Food Festival. Credit: Forage Colorado

Sizzled shishito tostadas

As a wide range of fresh chilies are harvested at local farms, the Boulder County Farmers Markets shares a recipe using one of the season’s easy-eating favorites: mild-tasting, thin-skinned shishito peppers.

Get the recipe for shishito-topped tostadas here.

Shishito chilies are thin-skinned, typically mild green Asian peppers that are usually cooked quickly in oil. Credit: Boulder County Farmers Markets

“Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money can’t buy
And that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.”

— From “Homegrown Tomatoes” by Guy Clark