Barry Estabrook, author of the phenomenal Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, was the guest of honor at a dinner I attended recently. I've written about Estabrook and his amazing book here before, so I don't need to encourage you yet again to read it.
The evening highlighted tomatoes, to be sure, and the need for agricultural labor reform, obviously, but it also brought out the interesting account from Bon Appétit Management, the food service company hosting the dinner at Mijita in San Francisco, that when Estabrook's original article in Gourmet magazine about labor abuses in the tomato fields of Florida came out in 2009 the issue of agricultural labor abuses reached a whole new audience. Chefs, the company found, had read the article. After a few years of trying to get their chefs on-board with the notion that tomatoes might not be on menus year-round, chefs were coming to the company and saying, hey, if these are the tomatoes we can get out-of-season, if the tomatoes that come through our kitchens might be grown and harvested in these abusive conditions, we don't want them.
Estabrook assured those in attendance that labor abuses are being addressed and workers are learning what their rights are. "There is hope," he said, "in the tomato fields of Florida."
There was hope on the table, too. Hope for a truly spectacular tomato season here in Northern California: cherry tomatoes roasted with tiny padron peppers and a peach-and-tomato salad (pictured above) were the delicious highlights. We ended with a tomato-pineapple sorbet which sounds weird but was light and refreshing and tasted really neither of tomato nor pineapple but just of a fruity sweet frozen delight.
My tomato-eating is a seasonal thing, and that season is now. Delicious dry-farmed tomatoes are at my market and I am eating my fill of them, I tell you what.
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