I'm reading bits and pieces of a wonderfully informative book "On
Food and Cooking, The Science and lore of the Kitchen" by Harold
McGee. I was wondering if he had anything about beans not cooking
when cooked with tomatoes when I ran across the statement
"When fresh tomatoes are cooked down to make a thick sauce, the gain
some flavors [...], but they lose the fresh "green" notes provided by
unstable fragment of fatty acids and by a particular sulfur
compound. Because tomato leaves have a pronounced fresh-tomato aroma
thanks to their leaf enzymes and prominent aromatic oil glands, some
cooks add a few leaves to a tomato sauce toward the end of the
cooking, to restore its fresh notes."
So has anyone done this. How does it work?
I've avoided tomato leaves because I was told they were toxic. McGee
goes on to explain that although they contain tomatine, a toxin, it
cannot be absorbed by us. He notes that green tomatoes also contain
tomatine. I make Fried Green Tomatoes all the time, and I'm only a
little brain dead, so leaves must be ok.
What do people think.
-jam
"All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!"
Lucy Van Pelt (in Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)
Interesting idea, John.
But I don't think I'd adopt it for my own.
Green tomatoes, although tart, are good - and even
provide a different vitamin - A few years ago,
Modern Maturity, an AARP magazine ran a great article
on green and red tomatoes. The leaves weren't mentioned.
I think I'd find another way to liven up the sauce.
In fact many cooks do the opposite adding a bit of
sugar to the tomatoes.
June
hurt!"
Our family adds sugar. It cuts down on the acidity of the tomatoes for those of us that either don't like the acid flavour or whose stomachs can't handle it so much. I think I would avoid the green leaf addition too. Can't imagine it adding any flavour that *I* would want given that I've sort of tasted the leaves accidently through contact with my hands. Nope....to me they're just very bitter and awful tasting.
Brenda
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 5:32 am
Subject: Re: Cooking with Tomato leaves
> I've avoided tomato leaves because I was told they were toxic.
I have always learned that ALL GREEN PARTS of not only tomato; but
all plants in the Solanacea family including also potato are toxic
> i would be careful:
"All the flowers of all tomorrows are in the seeds of today!"
Arnhild Bleie - Hardanger in Norway
Two sites that say tomato leaves are poisonous:
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Lycopersicon+esculentum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato
One that says they aren't toxic to adults, but recommends against =
ingesting them:
http://experts.about.com/q/Growing-Vegetables-740/Edible-Tomato-leaves.ht=
m
My own experience with tomato leaves--back in my hippie days when I =
worked at my first greenhouse job, my friend and I ate tomato seedlings =
that we had left over from transplanting into blocks. We didn't get =
sick, but the seedlings were very tiny and wouldn't have been a very =
substantial dose of anything toxic. I wouldn't eat any more nowadays!
Lee Ann
Our family adds sugar. It cuts down on the acidity of the tomatoes for =
those of us that either don't like the acid flavour or whose stomachs =
can't handle it so much. I think I would avoid the green leaf addition =
too. Can't imagine it adding any flavour that *I* would want given that =
I've sort of tasted the leaves accidently through contact with my hands. =
Nope....to me they're just very bitter and awful tasting.
Brenda
The problem is that the statement is
"A spray made from tomato leaves is an effective but very
poisonous insecticide"
People automatically say if it is an insecticide, then it must be
poisonous to humans. But ALL herbs are insecticides, your rosemary,
your oregano, your citrus. Plants only make odors for two reasons:
to attract pollinators or to discourage being eaten. A caterpillar
has a different digestive system than ours. Ours is acid theirs alkaline.
Reading more carefully, what happens is in our digestive system
tomatine binds with cholesterol and the binding is so tight it, it
cannot be broken down so it is not absorbed. That doesn't happen in
insects so the alkaloid kills them (or most of them, some species adapt).
McGee also talks about another misconception. That one adds sugar to
tomato sauce to make it less acid. What sugar does is intensify the
flavor. This masks the acidity. In fact, adding more acid will also
increase the flavor! If you think about it, a tablespoon of sugar in
4 quarts of sauce is very little!
Interesting book. I'm going to try the tomato leaves idea next summer.
-jam
On 2/15/06, at 9:12 PM, Allium Ophioscorodon Rocambole2@COX.NET said:
> "A spray made from tomato leaves is an effective but very
> poisonous insecticide"
I wonder how its effectiveness compares with off-the-shelf
insecticides. I guess, if it were more effective, there would be
products containing it as the active ingredient.
Tom Miller
....
...........................................
"The only time we see the middle of the road is as
we run from side to side." R.O.Clark
....................................................
Oxalic acid is present in tomato leaves, the same chemical that makes
rhubarb leaves toxic. Ran across a recipe for using tomato leaves and
ground up onions for an insecticide:
_____________________________________________________________________________
June Dean wrote:
My only thought on this was that cooked tomatoes don't taste like fresh
tomatoes. The concentration of sweetness and acidity is their essence =
and
I'm not sure that messing with it would be a good thing.
But I always admire experimentation. (You taste it, Mikey)
I wonder if any commercial companies use this technique for canned =
products?
Esther Czekalski
