If there is one fruit that stands out in my mind as the poster child for late summer, it is the tomato. It bursts upon the scene in July, crowding farmers markets and restaurant menus.

With the possible exception of my sister, people I know can't seem to get enough of tomatoes. We slice them, dice them, pickle them, stew them, can them, stuff them, and do just about everything decent and indecent one can think of to them. The Spanish are so overwhelmed by them that the strip down and throw them at each other in what is possibly the largest single-item, annual food fight in the world.

Then suddenly, like all good things, their season comes to an end. The Spaniards clean up their mess, the marketeers start pimping other fruit like persimmons (which, to the extremely myopic, might look like anemic tomatoes), the rest of us move on to the next ripe thing that catches our eye, and summer just goes away.

For most people, anyhow.

I seem to know a lot of folks who are doing their damnedest to bottle up enough summer to warm themselves and their loved ones in the upcoming colder months. For example, the gentlemen over at Hedonia recently processed 200 pounds of tomatoes and have offered their services to help friends do the same. And there are others. Thanks to the connective powers of Facebook, I was recently re-acquainted with a fellow named Kevin West, who is not only saving his tomatoes, but seemingly anything and everything that can be pickled, jammed, or otherwise preserved in a burst of worker ant hyper-activity.

After reading West's blog, I had to admit to myself that preserves and other "put-up" items are an enormous weakness of mine, in terms of both affection and, sadly, experience. Why have I never preserved anything beyond cherries for my winter Manhattans? I decided I must do something about both my inexperience and my bad habit of playing Aesop's grasshopper, while my worker ant friends toiled away with an eye toward winter. I decided to stop fiddling around and roll up my sleeves.

I gave my début into the society of preservationists some thought. I was going to bottle up my own bit of summer as brightly as a child collecting fireflies in a Mason jar. Noting that I owned a few empty Mason jars, but that fireflies are rather difficult to come by in San Francisco, I opted for tomatoes instead. Yes, I would create something that I thought best captured the essence of the tomato's warm, summer ripeness.

Ketchup.

Why I chose ketchup is rather hard to say. I may have thought a lot about it, but I never said that my thinking wasn't fundamentally flawed.

While discussing this condiment that the Reagan administration legally defined as a vegetable with my friend Jay, I was wondering aloud about how it was made. "Well, Mikey, ketchup doesn't just happen, you know," implying that somebody has to make it. I decided to become that somebody who happens to make ketchup.

I bought the loveliest tomatoes I could find and waited for them to ripen. I pored over dozens of ketchup recipes, selectively hybridizing them the way growers create new strains of corn or pumpkins. I even added my own, secret touches to add depth. I would start small and see what became of my creation.

Three pounds of beautiful tomatoes, ripe and bursting with juice, sat on my cutting board. I saluted them and told them how lucky they were to be giving their lives for such a time-honored experiment in preservation before hacking them to pieces and throwing them into my dutch oven.

I added the shallots, the vinegar, and the spices neatly tied up in cheese cloth. I let them all stew, stirred them with care, puréed them, and sieved the sauce according to direction. Everything was perfect. I reduced it and then I reduced it some more. I added sugar and salt.

I took a bit of the sauce and spooned it onto a cold plate. Not as thick as the Heinz variety, not nearly as runny as soup. It had both the color and viscosity of arterial blood, which seemed to me the perfect metaphor of essence-- a sort of tomato life force. Three pounds of gorgeous tomatoes reduced to slightly more than half a cup of sauce.

And then I tasted it.

It tasted exactly like ketchup. Of course, that's what it was supposed to taste like. It just didn't taste much like summer. More correctly, it tasted as much of summer as the yellow mustard that typically sits next to the ketchup at an outdoor barbecue. I had taken those three pounds of tomatoes and turned them into next-to-nothingness. The concentration of tomato flavor was there, but it was obscured by the twelve or so other ingredients it shared space with. It was as though someone had taken their grandmother's ashes and dumped them into a giant ashtray. You know she's there but, unless she was known as a heavy smoker, her true essence has been lost in a mix of menthols and ultra-lights.

The experiment was not a total disaster, since I actually learned how to make ketchup-- mediocre ketchup, to be sure, but ketchup, nevertheless. Spending $30.00 to make a half cup of passable ketch, however, is not exactly cost-effective. In the future, I shall stick to my beloved Muir Glen brand and let them do all the work.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up on the canning and preserving idea. Quite the opposite, in fact. If anything, I have learned that I have a lot to learn about technique, subtlety, and, above all, patience.

In the meantime I will move on to other fruits that are ripe for experiment. I'll leave tomatoes alone, save to occasionally slice one and decorate it with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt until I have had my fill of them for the season. Then, when it's colder, I will beg my more productive friends for a jar or two of their efforts to tide me over until next year. That is, if they take pity upon a poor grasshopper like me.

It's heirloom tomato season! The folks over at Visa and the chefs of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association wisely recognized that's reason enough to celebrate. Beginning next week over 52 restaurants and chefs are putting together special themed tasting menus including Chris Cosentino of Incanto, Bruce Hill of Bix, Traci des Jardins of Jardinière and Acme Chop House, and Craig Stoll of Delfina. Pay for your meal with a Visa Signature card you will also receive a tomato commemorative book, including special recipes from the chefs and restaurants involved in the event.


What: Heirloom Tomato Week

When: August 14-24 plus a tasting event August 7-9 at Union Square.

Where: Selected San Francisco restaurants

How: Dine at any of the participating restaurants, by booking at OpenTable

Why: Let's put that nasty salmonella outbreak behind us once and for all, and enjoy the pure pleasure of tomatoes again.

Here's an example of an heirloom tasting menu with wine pairing, from one of the participating restaurants, Plumpjack Cafe :

Heirloom tomato salad
Tarragon Aioli, Banyuls Vinegar, Onion Marmalade

Cambiata Albarino 2007 Monterey

Seared day boat scallops
Golden Tomato Vinaigrette, Savoy Spinach

Dom. de la Chapelle Macon Soultre Pouilly 2007 France

Tomato braised kurobuta pork shoulder
Pimenton de Padron, Summer Squash, Moroccan Black Olives

Lagerla Rosso di Montalcino 2004 Italy

Selection of cheeses
Heirloom Tomato Condiments, Toasted Peasant Bread

Lustau “Emilin” Moscatel Sherry Spain

Tasting menu is $45 and optional wine pairing $21

Want to enjoy the best Summer produce at home? Here's a recipe adapted from Barilla Pasta.

Summer Spaghetti

1 lb whole grain spaghetti
2 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 small white onion, finely chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, julienned
2 cups zucchini, diced
2 cups yellow squash, diced
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
Salt and black pepper, to taste
4 fresh basil leaves, torn

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet. Using the side of a knife, gently press and peel the garlic and sauté in skillet for 1 minute, or until slightly brown. Add onion and sauté for 5 minutes, or until translucent. Add bell pepper, zucchini, yellow squash and sauté until heated but not completely cooked. Add tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and sauté for 2 additional minutes.

Drain pasta, add to skillet and toss with basil before serving.

Get 'em while you can...
Before tomatoes are gone for the season, do yourself a favor (you'll thank yourself in a few months when you are longing for that delicious tangy-sweet tomato flavor and all you can find in the stores are red globe-shaped styrofoam replicas masquerading as tomatoes) and buy a big huge bag of fresh ripe tomatoes. Make a pot of tomato sauce, a relaxing Sunday afternoon activity, which you can then freeze and use in hearty winter pasta dishes when you'd rather be curled up at home than out in the freezing rain.

This is the kind of sauce that you almost don't need a recipe to make. It's versatile, flexible, and very forgiving. What you add to it is largely a matter of taste. In fact, I don't think I've ever made the same sauce twice. But I do use the following recipe as a starting point. What ends up in the sauce largely depends on what is in my fridge or pantry at the time, whether it's the simple basic all-purpose sauce here or includes such embellishments as roasted red bell pepper; fresh oregano, thyme or basil; dried red chile flakes, minced garlic, roasted garlic, mushrooms, or zucchini.

You can also use virtually any kind of tomato--heirlooms, beefsteaks, plum tomatoes, or whatever type you can get your hands on. So make your way to the nearest farmers' market, or beg your co-worker for the rest of his tomatoes that he's always handing out in the office, and get that sauce made before delicious fresh ripe summer tomatoes are gone for another year.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

About 40 ripe medium tomatoes
1 large yellow onion
1 or 2 medium carrots
2 or 3 stalks celery
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Red wine

To blanch and peel the tomatoes, fill a large stockpot 2/3 full of water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Cut a small "x" in the bottom of each tomato. Carefully add about a third of the tomatoes to the boiling water, let simmer for about 20 seconds, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Blanch the remaining tomatoes in this way.
Peel the tomatoes, discarding the skins, then cut in half crosswise and squeeze out the seeds. Roughly chop the tomatoes and set aside.

Dice the onion, carrots, and celery.

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, warm a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onions and saute until they begin to turn translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the carrots and celery and about 2 teaspoons salt and some pepper. Saute until tender and the onions start to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, a few glugs of wine, reduce the heat to low, and partially cover the pot.

Let simmer until tender and saucy, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Add salt and pepper to taste. At this point you can leave the sauce chunky...

...or you can puree it with an immersion blender (which is the way I like it).

To store the sauce, let it cool completely, then divide it between freezer bags or other storage containers and freeze.