I never know which tomatoes (fresh, tinned etc) to use for what. Help!
Rob, London E11
You’re really looking at five options, Rob: fresh, tinned, passata (pureed and sieved tomato sauce), concentrate (or puree) and sun-dried. Let’s park sun-dried tomatoes, because, as Jacob Kenedy, chef-owner of Bocca di Lupo in London, notes, they’re more a “standalone ingredient, so eat as is or chop and put through something”. Fresh, however, are in season now, and their quality will depend on where you live and where you’re buying them. “If I’m in a hot country, where they have really good tomatoes, I tend almost exclusively to use fresh, whether they’re for a salad, sauce or stew,” Kenedy says. In the UK, however, “it’s harder to get those flavoursome tomatoes, especially at the supermarket”.
There are, of course, scenarios where only fresh will do. Sophia Massarella, who is behind Polentina in east London, puts “nice, fat, juicy Sorrento tomatoes from Campania” to work in pomodori col riso (tomatoes stuffed with rice and herbs), salads (“panzanella is amazing made with these, bull’s heart or heirloom British tomatoes’’) and sauces. “Over the summer, I always make a sauce with fresh and tinned tomatoes for parmigiana,” she says, explaining that the tinned bring “a bit of savoury, whereas just fresh alone can be too sweet”.
