Author: joepastry

..and the tomato table was impressive. You should have been there. This shot probably represents about one percent of the total competition. Can I inject at this point that the corn dog is the world’s most perfect food? It is. But you need an honest-to-goodness fair to get a decent one. Fortunately, the Kentucky State […]

It’s Gale Gand’s sweet tomato tart. And a fine thing it is, too. Happily I found some superior plum tomatoes at a local machine shop the other day. Yes I said a machine shop. This is Kentucky, friend. The guy happens to grow great produce. What? As for any tart, you want to be very […]

Well, let’s see. In the world of tomatoes there are Beefsteaks, Big Boys, Bonny Bests, Burpees and Black Krims. Jubilees, Early Girls, Ponderosas and Patios. Then you’ve got your Abraham Lincoln’s, Box Car Willies, German Pinks, Giant Syrians, Purple Russians, Hungarian Hearts, Mexico Midgets, Cherokee Purples and Hillbilly Potato Leafs. Moonglows, Shepherd’s Sacks, Purple Hazes, […]

It used to be Joe Pastry policy that I’d never post the intellectual property of others on the site, I’d just link to it. That of course was before it became fashionable for big commercial sites (as well as many smaller ones) to deny leeches like me hot-linking ability. And it’s really been a pain, […]

My wife, Jo Beth Pastry, just returned from her Wednesday morning coffee ritual, NYT food section in hand. What did I see when I looked at the cover? A lead story on tomatoes and a recipe for tomato and lemon marmalade. A day late and a dollar short again, Old Media! It was Joe Pastry […]

Which isn’t a good thing for tomatoes. I’ve never been much of a gardener, mind you. However I do know an authority when I see one: a little old Chinese lady I shop next to most Saturday mornings. This last week we were both salivating over pint containers of positively perfect little pear tomatoes. I […]

Try this jam. You’ll be amazed at what a fresh, ripe tomato can do in a sweet context. I need to underscore here that this is not a sweetened tomato sauce. It’s nothing like chili sauce, nothing like salsa, nothing like gazpacho. It’s everything like what it is: jam. The genius of great-grandma’s recipe is […]

Being Scots-Irish I didn’t have an Italian grandmother. However I did have an adoptive one lent to me by neighbors; the grandmother of two boys who lived across the alley from the house I grew up in. Given that both of them had sandy blond hair and their last name was Aylesworth, they weren’t your […]

In an ordinary year, I’d be posting heavily on things like fruit desserts and preserves about now. The trouble is there is virtually no local fruit to be had around Louisville this year. The spring frost that laid waste to the dogwood blooms just two weeks before the Derby also snuffed out all our fruit […]