for all Pratico purposes

In a few weeks, we’ll have apples and winter squash littering our kitchens in bountiful and pleasant ways. But if the latter two descriptives are true, then the word ‘littering’ is not quite correct. Change that to ‘gracing’. But whatever. Today, what litters and at once graces our porches and kitchens is tomatoes. And really, it’s only the lucky ones of us – the ones whose gardens didn’t go into an extended sulk at the unprecedented amount of rain they were required to soak up – who have a litter of tomatoes to at once glory in and feel responsible to do something with.

...The Pratico tomato...

There are, as usual, exceptions to that rule, and I am one. My garden DID sulk, but I was the grateful recipient of a basket of Pratico tomatoes, which I talked about last year in an article called “Sex in the Garden” which dealt with, among other things, the Menduni and Pratico tomatoes.

If you’ll remember, the Pratico came from seeds given to Stephen Chamberlain of Dutchess Farm in Castleton by an elderly person at the Farmers’ Market one summer day, in the hopes that Steve would propagate an old family favorite. S/he said he’d developed them, part beefsteak, part paste tomato. Luckily, Steve did propagate them, thereby saving an incredibly ugly but luscious tomato. It’s a fat, long tomato tapering to a pointed blossom end. It has very little core, the shoulders are as tender and meaty as the rest of it, it has few seeds and jel, and lots of flavorful flesh.

...patsy...

After that article was published Ray Pratico, Jr. called me and offered this conjecture.

He thinks it was his great-uncle, Pasquale (Patsy) Pratico who developed – hybridized – the Pratico tomato. Patsy was the brother of Ray’s grandfather, Anthony Pratico, who started Pratico’s Barber Shop on Strongs Avenue next to Gill’s Delicatessen.

The brothers came from Reggio in Calabria, Italy, Patsy in 1918 and Tony in 1920.

Back in 1918, Pasquale escaped a horrendous depression in Italy and worked hard so that he could send back $35 for his brother’s passage. The depression taught him well. Ray remembers fishing with his Uncle Patsy on Lake Champlain, and when they caught an eel Patsy would bring it home to eat. “Fish that you and I would never consider eating, he would consider a delicacy.” He was a champion skeet shooter – learning when he was in Italy by being charged with taking a shotgun and shooting robins for the family’s dinner, “and he wasn’t to waste a shell by shooting only one robin, he had to shoot six at a time.” We imagined that they’d taste pretty good with a little tomato sauce.

Ray says that Uncle Patsy had a beautiful garden in his back yard at the south corner of Union and Forest in Rutland where he grew, not so much broccoli or cucumbers, but peppers “as big as my head,” and tomatoes – presumably developing, along the way, our precious Pratico – onions, garlic and eggplants, all the ingredients for a great sauce and parmesans. “And you did not want to be caught playing out in that back yard.” I did some exploring, and if what I found was Pasquale’s backyard and it is the same size it was then, I have to say it is truly tiny. But apparently Patsy planted every nook and cranny of it.

Anthony Pratico died in 1999, close to a hundred years old. Pasquale died in 1990.

Do they still have seeds for the Pratico tomato? Still grow it? Ray is uncertain, but he says, “Everyone buys Ragu, it’s cheap and it’s easy.”

I think I know where you could get some seeds, Ray, and continue carrying on a tradition.

...and grandmother menduni...

The Menduni had been saved from extinction by Claire Clarino, whose grandmother Menduni had brought seeds from her town in Italy called Chella, and had grown them until she died, when Claire took them over. “Claire saves seeds each year and grows them in her mother’s garden in Rutland, her ex-husband grows them in Key West where they climb to six feet or more, and a market gardener in Grand Isle grows large crops of them for sale,” I wrote then. They are a large, meaty plum shaped tomato, with excellent taste. Apparently they take a little longer to ripen, for I have not yet got my first taste of them this year.

...spreading the seed...

I saved seeds from the Menduni and the Pratico, and gave some to Paul Horton at Foggy Meadow Farm in Benson – he who was the giver, this year, of the basket of Praticos – and my friend Dana Squire in Virginia – she with a climate which allows her to plant the seeds directly into her – prolific – garden! – and Marilyn Burnham, gardener and cook extraordinaire, in South Wallingford.

Marilyn had no luck with them. They were fine until she put them into her rainy garden, and then they just stood right up and died. Dana, on the other hand, emailed me photos of her “thrilling” crop, saying, “I processed some last night – I don't usually grow plums – and what bliss to not have squirts going off in every direction. Delicious flavor. They will be featured all next month. They are huge – like 6" long!”

Paul Horton had good luck with germination, and planted about 20 plants, from which he and his partner, Sally Beckwith have “probably put up 40 pounds, and maybe we’ll get another 30 pounds.” They will not be widely available at the Foggy Mountain Farm stand at the Farmers’ Market this year, but he hopes for a larger crop next year.

In a couple of serendipitous asides, a friend gave Paul some tomato plants this spring that hailed from Providence, Rhode Island. By the time he got them they were rather sickly looking plants that he’s nursed along until they are producing some fruit that is now almost ready to taste. They are, he thinks, both a red and yellow Sergi Sicilian tomato, the red called Doro Rossi Lunghi, and the yellow P. Lunghi Gialli, and they are in appearance remarkably like the Pratico. Googling does nothing on this subject, but we wonder if they could possibly be from the same town in Italy, Reggio, each brought by different émigrés, a supposition that might hold a little more water if we did not already think that Pasquale Pratico ‘developed’ his tomato from beefsteak and plum tomatoes.

At the same time, a neighbor brought Paul some Jimmy Nardello pepper seeds, a multi-dimensionally sweet and intensely flavored banana-shaped pepper. They came originally from Seeds of Change, a company that was founded to save heirloom seeds that were in danger of dying out.

“This to me is really fascinating,” Paul told me, “because I think it’s really important that we have crops that we can save and share the seeds of, to reproduce these older varieties, because they’re reliable, and delicious, and because we need our own source of seeds without relying on seed companies.” Seeds of ordinary plants, like green beans, for instance, are getting much more expensive and even hard to get, other farmers have told me. Paul elaborated on that thought by saying, “More and more seed companies are being bought by big companies and the seed being hybridized and sold back to farmers.” It’s not good, we agree, when the seeds for our foods are all owned by industry!

That was the thought of Tom Stearns, the founder of High Mowing Seeds in Hardwick. In an article in the 9/03 Seven Days entitled Hungry Hardwick, Suzanne Podhaizer writes, “In 1995, [Stearns] began saving the seeds from his garden. ‘I was interested in having as self-sufficient a home garden as I possibly could,’ he recalls. After moving to Vermont, he realized he had more seeds than he could use, so he put together a miniature catalogue. In 2000, Stearns quit his day job to focus on his seeds full-time, and in 2005, decided to take the business national; with the economy in a slump and more people aiming to grow their own food, the move is paying off. ‘There’s a lot of people gardening who weren’t before,’ Stearns suggests.”

A little aside here – if you don’t follow Suzanne in either the online http://www.7dvt.com/ or the free hard copy of Seven Days, you should! She’s an indefatigable food sleuth, and what she doesn’t write about food from Middlebury to Montreal probably doesn’t merit writing about.

...saving tomato seeds...

Saving seeds, though, is a laborious process, especially if you want to save enough to take the product to market. So far, Sally and Paul are keeping most of the Praticos (the Mendunis aren’t quite ready yet) for their own use. Steve and Julia Chamberlain, too, keep most of their Praticos, though a few show up at the market. “Aren’t they the best tomatoes!” exclaims Julia, adding that it’s lucky for her that the tomatoes aren’t the gorgeous things that buyers expect. Steve adds that they’re poor yielding, too, and he can’t afford the time to train people to buy them for the taste. He mentions, though, that a Pratico relative from the Midwest, after reading the Sex in the Garden article, emailed Steve for some seeds.

Saving tomato seeds is a process of fermentation. Since Pratico tomatoes have very few seeds and little gel, lots of meat, you’ll have to do some digging. Slice the tomato in half lengthwise, maybe even into quarters. With a spoon, scrape the jel and seeds into a small bowl. Add a couple of tablespoons of water to the seeds. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap and then poke a small hole in it to allow for transpiration. Place it in a warm spot for two or three days, removing the plastic wrap each day to stir the mixture, then replace the plastic. There will be a layer of scum on top of the liquid when the fermentation process has separated the jel from the seeds, and destroyed many of the possible tomato diseases that might be harbored there. When this happens, pour the seeds into a fine kitchen sieve and rinse with water several times. Drain well and place on a piece of parchment or waxed paper and spread them into a single layer. Let them dry for maybe a week, stirring often. When they’re dry they do not stick to each other. To store them, wrap them envelope-style in parchment paper and label them with the name and the date.

...mfk symposium...

Lots of readers here seem to like MFK Fisher’s writing, and since this year she would have been 100 years old, the New School in NYC is hosting an MFK symposium on Sept. 22. It’s free for all students, only $8 for others, as I read it. Thought some of you MFK diehards would grab the chance. More details: A panel of distinguished guests celebrate the life of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, master food writer, and discusses her relationships with other American food celebrities, including Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters. Panelists include Amanda Hesser, food writer for the New York Time; Judith Jones, editor and author; Joan Reardon, author; and Kennedy Golden, Fisher’s daughter. Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, moderates. This event is offered in conjunction with a short course, MFK Fisher: Poet of the Appetites, beginning September 15; please visit www.newschool.edu/food studies for more information. Tickets: 212 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu

...didn’t i already mention marilyn...

My friend and neighbor Marilyn Burnham will be the next guest chef on What’s Cookin’ Rutland at Peg TV on Monday, 9/15. Marilyn is the superintendent of the Vermont State Fair’s culinary competitions, among other things, and she will introduce this year’s apple pie winner, Barbara Taraska, of Wallingford and points south, chat with host, Whitney Lamy, about the pleasures and tribulations of baking for, organizing, and judging the fair’s food contests, and show us how she makes her own apple pie. Studio guests will taste apple pies from Marilyn, Barbara, and Whitney.

What’s Cookin’ Rutland is taped from 6:00 – 6:30 PM, doors open at 5:30, and members of the audience must be seated by 5:45. You may bring your own beverages, if you like, a $10 donation is suggested, and for reservations call the Chaffee Art Center at 775-0356.

...hungry bikers wanted...

Got this note from Shelby Hammond of Rural Vermont about the TOUR DE FARMS event that Rural Vermont is hosting with the Addison County localvores and VT Bike-Ped Coalition. Choose a 10, 25, or 30 mile bike tour with stops through Shoreham at various farms and orchards to sample farm fresh goods. It's on Sunday the 21^st at 10:30 a.m. meeting in Shoreham. It’s $15 per adult and $8 for 15-and-unders, and you pre-register by calling (802)223-7222 or email Shelby@ruralvermont.org.

I’ve just done some investigation into Shoreham’s vital farm scene, and hmmm, wonder if my old bike still works...

The article “sex in the garden” can be found at http://thriceshy.blogspot.com/2008/03/sex-in-garden.html

This post was published As Twice Bitten Column in the Rutland Herald here.

Sex in the Garden

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I knelt in the garden watching a bee wriggle himself up the flower of a foxglove and then back himself out again covered in yellow dust, where he seemed to pause on the lip of the flower, seemingly dazed, and shake some sense back into himself, almost as though he were sneezing. Then he flew to another flower and eagerly scrabbled in. In one hand I held the phone and described the whole process to my mother, who said, and I could see her lips pursing, “You can see sex in ANYTHING, Daughter!” Well duh, just roll the flower parts around on your tongue – pistil, stamen, ovary, anther – now where’s the stigma in that?

Now, as I say, that WAS a long, long time ago, and hormones were still wreaking havoc, at least periodically, in my body, but now that I’m a bit calmer – one of the very few advantages of getting older, but a generous one, indeed – I still see sex in the garden and on the table. Sometimes to such an extent that it makes me purse my own lips.

...the French Charantais melon...

Just the other night I came in from supper of creamed cranberry beans, potatoes and carrots – all fresh as rainwater – alongside grilled chicken, eaten on the deck from dusk into dark – days shorten so fast in this brilliant season! – and was redding up the kitchen when the tiny Charantais melon spoke to me from the counter. I answered that call and held it in both of my hands and smelled the sweet ripeness of it before I put it on the cutting board and took my cleaver in hand. With the first gentle touch of the blade the Charantais sliced open like butter, seeds spurting from the center and sliding down the cut sides, perfectly ripe, ready to be planted sweetly into my mouth or into the ground to grow again. It was at that moment that my lips began to purse – I was that startled by the voluptuousness of this innocent-looking fruit. I actually drew back just a bit before I took a spoon and had a mouthful of those seeds – they’re good for you, you know – before I scraped the rest of them into the compost. Then I sliced half the melon into slivers and ate them with no salt, no nothing. My goodness it was good! I believe that was the most perfect melon I’ve ever eaten. Peak ripeness – even a moment before or after may not have achieved the same perfection.

Prissily, I wrapped the other half in plastic and put it in the fridge, wandered around thinking about how perfect it was, looked around for Leo, who was nowhere in sight, went to the fridge, snatched the plastic from the saved half, and then ate it, too. Not the plastic, silly...

I do believe that whatever essences were in that melon will be good for what ails me even if I don’t get another taste for another year.

...the Pratico/Menduni tomato...

Again, years ago – but not so long ago that I could use the Once Upon A Time phrase – Claire Clarino gave me some seeds from a strain of tomato that her grandmother Menduni had brought from Italy and that Claire has nurtured all these years, saving seeds from the best of them and planting them year after year. She calls them “Nonni’s Tomatoes,” and they are also called “Chella,” after her grandmother’s home town in Italy.

Now, in my dark old house, I never got them to germinate successfully, but I’ve always wondered about them. And then the other day I was being escorted by Steve Chamberlain on a tour of his Dutchess Farm in Castleton, when he suddenly reached down and grabbed a long, tubular shaped thing that seemed to be a long pepper but turned out to be a tomato. About 2 inches in diameter and maybe 5 inches long, it was not tapered but more sausage shaped, not red, exactly, but a blotchy maroon– in the sex-appeal category I’d rate it a Kissinger – you might recall Henry Kissinger as the supremely unlovely person who was National Security Adviser to the Nixon Administration, a terrible and even ugly man, but who, nevertheless, was said to be very attractive to women, apparently because of his lovely balance of acidic and sweet.

About that tomato: “These are called Pratico tomatoes,” said Steve. “An elderly person came by my stand one day and gave me seeds for them, said he’d developed them, part beefsteak, part paste tomato, and he wanted them to continue. So I put ‘em in the ground and they’re pretty good. Here, take one.”

I immediately thought of Claire’s tomato seeds, and took the ugly thing with alacrity. I thought they might be the same tomato, developed or at least saved by two different Italian families who’d settled on Meadow Street, in the section of Rutland called “the Gut”.

So, even after my near orgasmic experience with the Charantais Melon, still unsurfeited, I slice into the Pratico. Oh. My. Goodness. The Pratico is a tube of fine, juicy – but not too juicy – tomato flavor, nothing mushy or plum-mealy about it. A fine gift from one of our oldest families. Though not beautiful, when you slice through its tender skin at the blossom end you find fresh tasting tomato meat separated by tender seeds and jel, and as you continue to slice toward the stem end it becomes somewhat more mealy, but still very tasty. I imagine the melding of the whole into sauce would be quite rewarding, but perhaps not so much as eating them fresh. You can eat only so many tomatoes, though, however that many may be, and when you cannot eat more, and more are left, then you must turn them into sauce. And what a sauce that would be, come February. Or even next week.

Thinking that my taste buds might just be in a good mood, ready to drool over any old morsel, I decide to test the Pratico toughly against the greenhouse-raised tomatoes – Buffalo, by name – from Dutchess Farm.

These are not exactly “greenhouse” tomatoes. They’re planted in soil, in a field, root-watered, with the amendments to the soil the rest of the farm gets – compost, composted manure, green manure from wheatgrass. Their only difference is that they are protected by a plastic tent, the sides of which can be rolled down or up, to regulate the heat and the cold. “Tomatoes aren’t usually a New England plant,” Steve says. “They need more heat; and, as well, under plastic the water doesn’t stand on the leaves, which prevents disease.” Plus, in this protected venue they get an earlier start.

Dutchess Farm has the earliest tomatoes at the market, and probably the latest into the fall. And the turnover is tremendous. There’s no way to grow heirlooms – the Pratico, the Brandywine, Green Zebra, Black Krim – in that number. They’re much more idiosyncratic, and are grown, a patch here and there in the crevices of the garden system and pattern. Thank the market gardener/farmer who still gives formal space to these wonderful things, and buy them, so they’ll keep growing them.

After tasting the Buffalo, good flavor, nice texture, juicy, and much prettier than the Pratico, I’m still blown away by the latter.

The following Saturday I arranged to meet Claire at the Farmers’ Market. She brought a bag of her Nonnie’s tomatoes. Were they the same as the Praticos? I was certain they would be. Eagerly I opened the bag, and my jaw fell. They were NOT!

Nonnie’s Tomatoes are a large plum shape and much prettier than the Pratico. Cut into, they are almost solid flesh, the absolute best, I’m sure, for a tomato sandwich or a thick tomato sauce. The taste is not as transparent as the Pratico, but superb in itself, with the texture of a classic plum – great for sauce. Claire saves seeds each year and grows them in her mother’s garden in Rutland, her ex-husband grows them in Key West where they climb to six feet or more, and a market gardener in Grand Isle grows large crops of them for sale. By spreading those seeds around Claire hopes to insure the survival of the Menduni.

Here we have two heirloom tomatoes brought from the old country a hundred or more years ago, entirely different from each other, nurtured by offspring and farmers, and they’re probably only two of many, right here in the Rutland area. Immigrants used to arrive on American shores with seeds concealed in the brims of their hats and sewn into the hems of their dresses. Thomas Jefferson smuggled rice seeds out of Italy and then wrote, “The greatest service which can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” Countries and geographical areas create “banks” of seeds for the preservation of the species. When crop failures occur or the land gives out from growing only a few strains of Genetically Modified Seeds owned by a few chemical and drug companies on hundreds of millions of acres, perhaps the few people surviving will be able to find a few acres here and there on which to plant their heirloom seeds. For an interesting take on this phenomenon see John Seabrook, “Sowing for Apocalypse” in the August 27 New Yorker.

Thank you Claire, and thank you Steve, for saving the Mendunis and the Praticos.

... naked farmers...

RAFFL, with the Rutland County Farmers’ Market is putting out a full monte calendar featuring farmers in tasteful buff tending to their business, in order to get our attention about the amazing array of local farm products grown in Rutland County. It’s very, very cute and for a good cause. $15. Order several for gifts. Check it out at the RAFFL table at the Rutland Farmers’ Market or contact Mike Horner at

... more smut...

I had meant to talk about the amazing Sex Life of Corn, but space is dwindling, and I would merely be sensationalizing what Betty Fussell has already said in The Story of Corn, as well as Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pick them up if you are really craven. By the way: Corn smut is a disease of maize caused by the pathogenic plant fungus Ustilago maydis ... Wikipedia

...and that’s it...

Well, what did you expect? Lady Chatterley’s Lover?

First Published in the Rutland (Vermont) Herald on September 11, 07