The $64 Tomato

by William Alexander

  He ought to know. I found out some months later that I had been advised to build a huge, sixteen-hour bonfire in my yard by none other than the town fire chief.

  I have since given up this filthy, somewhat antisocial habit of burning my brush, but as I say, I was a veteran of several fires by the time I was contemplating setting fire to the meadow. I resolved to burn it that spring, after we had returned from a family Easter vacation in the Southwest.

  Even though this was early April, the garden was, as always, a family member that had to be accommodated. I had eight trays of young seedlings growing under fluorescent lights on the enclosed porch, and they wouldn’t survive the nearly two weeks without water. After considering several options, we decided to bring them to Anne’s office, where one of her staff had offered to tend them.

  Near the end of our trip, we visited Bandelier National Monument, an hour or so from Santa Fe and adjacent to Los Alamos, home of the nation’s worst-kept nuclear secrets. Hidden in the Jemez Mountains and only rediscovered in 1880, Bandelier is a magical place, once the home of the Anasazi Indians, who dug scores of cliff houses in the soft volcanic walls and erected large, multistory pueblo dwellings in the valley. One can still climb rickety wooden ladders and enter the cave dwellings, their ceilings black from the soot of cooking fires. For hundreds of years, the Anasazi lived in the valley, farming, hunting, fishing, and taking water from the stream that flowed year-round through the floor of the valley.

  Then around five hundred years ago the Anasazi cliff dwellers left their valley and cave dwellings behind and vanished, virtually without a trace. A number of theories have been proffered to explain their sudden disappearance from the Jemez Mountains and other settlements in present-day New Mexico, ranging from the mundane (climatic change) to the exotic (ritual cannibalism). Granted, I’m no archaeologist or anthropologist, but having visited a few of these sites, I lean toward the mundane. As I wandered through these settlements, I found myself asking, not why they left, but why they came. It looked as though it must have been a difficult, on-the-edge existence in a dry, hostile environment. Perhaps my theory betrays my avocation, but when it comes to Bandelier, at least, I wonder if the explanation may simply be that the stream dried up. The stream, the sole source of water for drinking, farming, cooking, their very lifeblood, dried up, and they had to move on. For while you may be able to carry sufficient water into that valley for drinking and cooking, you cannot carry enough in for irrigation, for farming. In other words, the farmer in me thinks they left simply because they couldn’t farm.

  As we approached Bandelier that day, we were greeted by the disturbing, acrid smell of smoke. Then as we entered the park, we drove past the smoke and, alarmingly, orange flames of brushfires. It was a startling sight. Right alongside the road, the forest was gently but steadily burning, small orange flames licking at the bases of the pines, feeding on brush and fallen needles. Being easterners, our first reaction was, “Jesus Christ, the forest is on fire! Run, Thumper, run!” But a park ranger explained that we were witnessing a so-called prescribed burn set by the Parks Service to rid the forest floor of dangerous, combustible brush and debris that, if left in place, would someday inevitably feed a huge, uncontrolled fire. We were relieved by the news, and the strategy seemed to make sense, but still, we all agreed, it was a tad spooky that there was no one around the fire we had witnessed. Shouldn’t someone be standing there watching it, attending it? I remembered what the town fire chief had told me about standing by with a hose.

  By the time we stepped off the plane in New York a couple of days later, the smoke was choking Santa Fe, the laboratories and secrets of Los Alamos had been abandoned, and the Bandelier fire, wildly out of control, was front-page news even in New York. Before the fire was extinguished some days later, it had destroyed 260 homes, forced the evacuation of 25,000 people, and destroyed 48,000 acres of New Mexico (but not, thankfully, the priceless ruins of the Anasazi).

  Roy Weaver, the Bandelier superintendent who gave the go-ahead to light the match, later said, “I don’t want to deny our responsibility for igniting the prescribed fire. But we did it with a plan that seemed valid and workable. Things happened that we couldn’t or didn’t anticipate. And that we couldn’t control.”

  WE RETURNED HOME to eight trays of withered seedlings. A total, heartbreaking loss.

  I thought about my meadow. And hubris. And about my well-thought-out plan that also seemed valid and workable. I wondered what the things were that I couldn’t anticipate, and of course I knew that I couldn’t anticipate the things I couldn’t anticipate. I gazed at my weedy meadow and pictured it ablaze. Suddenly the prospect seemed chilling. I pictured myself being interviewed by the local paper, my neighborhood, my town a smoldering ruin, saying, “But I did it with a plan that seemed valid and workable. Things happened that I couldn’t or didn’t anticipate. And that I couldn’t control.”

  So today my copy of Building Controlled Fires sits collecting dust on my bookshelf, having assumed the role of a curious relic, not a well-thumbed how-to guide.

  The meadow is reaching middle age now. It has forgotten my plan for it and is becoming what it wants to be, as is nature’s wont. And it wants to be tall—very tall —rye-grass with a scattering of daisies and black-eyed Susans that are visible for a few weeks of the year. I’ve given up trying to maintain it, for the most part. Some purple loosestrife moved in a few years ago. I let this invasive nonnative live for a month or so, enjoying its splash of tall violet among the rye, then ripped it out before it could go to seed and start taking over. I mostly just let the meadow be, but once in a while I give it a little help.

  I suppose if nature had wanted a meadow in my yard, she would have put one there long before I had the idea. A perfect meadow, such as the one on Prince Edward Island, is there because conditions at that location are perfect for a meadow. The strong ocean winds that keep the grasses short, the absence of weed spores blowing in from the ocean, the well-drained soil, other factors beyond my vision—these natural features have all come together in this spot to build a perfect meadow.

  Yes, with enough determination, you can build and maintain a meadow anywhere, a beautiful Sound of Music meadow. But you need lots of time, a strong back, and the nerve—or hubris—to light the match.

  And here is something else I’ve figured out: I don’t have the time, I never had the back, and thank you, Mr. Weaver, for teaching me a thing or two about hubris.

  Shell-Shocked:

  A Return to the Front (Burner)

  For the tree is known by its fruit.

  —Matthew 12:33

  Can someone go out and get me some thyme?” I asked as dinner hour was approaching. Not an unusual request, yet Anne pretended not to hear me, Katie pulled her sweater up over her face, and Zach spoke for all when he said, “Have fun with that, Dad.”

  I grabbed my parka and a trowel. It was February, we were in the middle of a blizzard, and the thyme in the garden was buried under a winter’s worth of snow. In other words, it was the perfect night for a piping hot potato-apple-thyme gratin.

  Since we have all that thyme obscuring the spigots, I always have some available—enough to operate a small green market, probably. Thyme, fresh thyme, is a marvelous herb. It’s the secret (along with one slice of candied ginger) to my chicken soup, great in marinades, and capable of transforming boring eggs into one terrific omelette aux fines herbes. Its tiny leaves can be quickly stripped from the plant by drawing thumb and forefinger down each twig, against the grain, right into the food, without dicing. Additionally, this underappreciated herb keeps its leaves—and its flavor—right through winter, especially if protected under a thick blanket of snow.

  I trudged toward the garden, almost leaving my boots behind in a snowdrift, and pushed on the iron gate. It wouldn’t budge through the deep snow, so, turning off the electric fence, I slipped between the wires for the short jump from the stone wall into the garden, landing softly in a white pillow. In the
dusk, the garden had taken on that eerie bluish hue you only see on winter evenings and, despite the snow, felt restful and quiet.

  And mysterious. The snow had blown and drifted so much that it was difficult to distinguish the paths from the beds. The garden was a blue gray arctic wilderness, an unbroken two-dimensional landscape of undulating snow interrupted only by the sundial and several trellises. It was breathtaking. I paused for a moment to admire its beauty, to absorb its stoic patience with the storm that had been making me antsy. A slap of wind-driven snow to my face snapped me back to my mission. It looked as though it would be easier to find my old septic tank than to locate the thyme.

  As I was trying to visualize the garden beneath its thick white quilt, something ten, fifteen feet away caught my eye, just barely peeking out through the snow, waving to me in the wind. I approached it. No, it couldn’t be, that would be too lucky … wait, it was … thyme! Using my trowel, I cleared the snow away and pinched off a few sprigs. That was easy. Sometimes I get to win one, I thought, straightening up to find myself facing Larry, sitting high in his Jeep, staring at me over the hedge. I triumphantly held up and waved the thyme at him so that he wouldn’t think I was totally nuts. Without responding, he engaged the snowplow mounted on his Jeep and zoomed up his driveway. Uh-oh. What he probably saw through the driving snow was me angrily shaking my fist at him. I’d have to repair the damage later. I headed inside with my bounty. Zach, observing the snow in my eyebrows and hair, seeing me clutching my prized herbs in frozen fingers, just shook his head.

  I felt I owed him some kind of explanation, in his own vernacular. “Dried thyme sucks,” I said, and proceeded to the kitchen to prepare my gratin.

  Venturing into a snowstorm to pick herbs may seem like slightly eccentric behavior from the old man, I’ll admit. But one reason why I have the kitchen garden is that it allows me to cook with fresh herbs in February. I think. Maybe it’s the other way around. Perhaps I seek out recipes requiring fresh thyme in February because I know I happen to have it and want to use it. Put more succinctly, do I cook because I garden, or garden because I cook?

  One thing is certain: having the garden does change the way I cook, as I am always looking for innovative things to do with the harvest. Without the garden, would I ever have discovered the simple delight of Russian banana fingerling potatoes roasted with olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh rosemary? Doubt it. Nor would I have experimented with pairing pasta and sage, something I tried on a whim only because I had three varieties of sage growing and needed something to do with it. Likewise, in late August, I am constantly fiddling around with tomatoes, looking for new things to do with them, slow-roasting them in the oven, chopping them into different salsas in combination with other fresh crops (our family favorite: tomato-peach-mint salsa), making fresh and cooked pasta sauces, and constructing unstable towers with mozzarella and basil. And certainly, without the garden, Katie and I would never, ever have made windowpane pasta with nasturtium butter.

  This memorable project started innocently enough, when I placed a new cookbook, one of those large-format ones with a color photograph of every recipe, in front of Katie one summer morning. “What should we make for lunch Saturday? Do you want to see if anything here looks interesting?”

  Jack and his wife, Pam, were coming over, and I didn’t have a menu yet. I knew we were going to start with broiled Brandywine tomatoes, each thick slice topped with a basil leaf, olive oil, and freshly grated Pecorino Romano, but I was stumped on the main course.

  “How about this?” Katie said a few minutes later, pointing to a photograph of pasta squares somehow imprinted with real herb leaves, covered in a rich butter sauce and garnished with edible nasturtium and violet flowers.

  I gulped hard. Asking me to make fresh pasta for Jack and Pam was like handing a shell-shocked soldier a rifle and sending him back to the front. It had been nearly twenty years since I had dared make fresh pasta for company. That first and last experience had been so traumatic I’d retired the pasta machine. If that wasn’t enough, the guests that night had been none other than Jack and Pam!

  Anxious to use my new Italian pasta machine, and anxious to impress not only my friends but my new girlfriend, Anne, I had decided to make carrot fettuccine in a cream sauce. The pasta dough, which I made in the food processor, took on a lovely pale orange hue from the pureed carrots, and all was going well until I tried to send the pasta through the machine.

  A pasta machine is simply a pair of adjustable rollers and a crank. Starting at the widest roller setting, and narrowing the space between the rollers with each pass, you feed the dough into the rollers with one hand while turning the crank with the other hand, receiving the rolled pasta with the—um—other hand.

  Precisely. That’s three hands. I had only two. If I used my left hand to feed, and let the too-sticky dough pile up on the outfeed side, the pasta ribbon folded back onto itself in a glutinous mess. If I moved my left hand to receive the rolled pasta, the dough I was feeding stuck to the top of the machine and tore. As I repeated sending the pasta through the machine, the dough becoming thinner and more delicate with each pass, this problem became more and more acute. Eventually I somehow managed to roll it all out, resorting to a rolling pin at times, and then cut it into strips of fettuccine.

  The fettuccine needed to be dried. I have since read that fresh pasta can be dried perfectly well laid flat on a floured surface or dish towel, but the cookbook I was using advised suspending the pasta from a drying rack. Thus the previous day I had built a rack based on one I had seen in a catalog, consisting of dowels set into a pine board. A couple of hooks at the top allowed me to mount the rack on a door so that the long strips of pasta draped over the dowels would have room to hang.

  I laid the last of my carrot fettuccine strips over the dowels as my guests were arriving. They were, I have to say, quite impressed at the sight of these two-foot-long pale orange pasta strips, decorating my door like Christmas tree tinsel. It was a proud moment. Anne smiled, I thought even lovingly. We all sat in the small kitchen as I poured some wine.

  Plop. What was that? A strip of pasta had landed on the kitchen floor. Our heads turned as one to the rack. Before our eyes, plop, a second strip simply broke in half and dropped to the floor. I raced to the rack as other strips started falling. As the pasta dried and became brittle, it was snapping under its own weight. Jack and Pam were hysterical. Anne jumped to my side, trying to be the supportive girlfriend, but was having a hard time seeing through her tears of laughter.

  The rest of the evening is but a blur. Somehow I salvaged the fettuccine, but I have never lived down the dinner. And now, Katie was offering a return to the nightmare. Or redemption.

  I told her my story.

  “Then you have to make this,” she insisted.

  I looked at the book. “I don’t know, Katie. This isn’t a recipe; this is a science project.”

  “I’ll help!” she pleaded. “I’ll be your third hand.” Now, how could I resist an offer like that? Besides, it was a spectacular-looking dish, something I was sure our guests had never had (and would never have again), and I liked the way it featured the garden, since we had a nice array of herbs available, as well as plenty of nasturtiums and violets. What the heck.

  Saturday morning, Katie shook me out of bed, and we went into the garden to pick herbs and tomatoes. With steady hands I pulled the pasta machine from the shelf, blew off the dust, and we proceeded to make pasta. I fed and cranked while Katie, standing on a chair, received the dough, and then we cut the pasta into three-inch-wide strips. Katie artfully arranged patterns of sage, parsley, basil, and dill on half of the strips. Then we laid an un-adorned strip atop each of the herbed ones and fed the resulting sandwich through the machine several times until the pasta was thin enough to become translucent, the herbs—pressed out like leaves under glass—easily visible inside. We dried the strips on the floured countertop without incident and cut the pasta into squares. By the time we were done, Kat
ie knew the names of all the herbs in the garden, and my love for making pasta had been restored.

  Jack and Pam laughed and shared a nostalgic moment when they heard we were serving homemade pasta, but the laughter stopped when Katie brought out the dish. It was visually stunning, the herbs from our garden glowing inside the little windows of pasta, which were glazed with a glistening butter sauce and adorned with orange nasturtiums and blue violets. The windowpane pasta with nasturtium butter, I have to admit, looked better than it tasted, but I’ll bet that no one remembers that today. Certainly, as a culinary tour de force to impress your friends and chase away an old ghost, it was hard to top. Best of all, Katie and I now make fresh pasta several times a year.

  THE STORY THAT MARCO POLO introduced pasta to Italy upon his return from China has been debunked, which is too bad, because were it true, it would make spaghetti and tomato sauce, that quintessential Italian dish, a fusion of Oriental and Aztec cuisine! For it is fairly certain that tomatoes originated in South America and were introduced from Central America to Europe shortly after the Spanish conquistador Cortés defeated the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán (today Mexico City) in 1521. Yet it was the Italians, not the Spaniards, who fully embraced and saw the culinary possibilities of this strange fruited vine the Aztecs called xitomatl.

  What were these Aztec tomatoes like? Certainly they were no beefsteak or Early Girl, but we would readily recognize these small, tough-skinned orbs as tomatoes today. But probably not red tomatoes. The earliest-known citation of the tomato in literature, in 1544 by the sixteenth-century writer and herbalist Petrus Matthiolus, refers to Italians eating pomi d’oro, or “golden apples,” suggesting that the first tomatoes introduced to Europe were more yellow than red. The name stuck even after red tomatoes were introduced, again probably by Spanish conquistadors or missionaries; thus the contemporary Italian word for tomato is pomodoro. Matthiolus, by the way, writes that Italians simply ate them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, which sounds strikingly modern, as though the dish were lifted off the summer lunch menu at Union Square Café.