Ripe
The Search for the Perfect Tomato
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
The tomato. As savory as any vegetable, as sweet as its fellow fruits, the seeded succulent inspires a cult–like devotion from food lovers on all continents. The people of Ohio love the tomato so much they made tomato juice the official state beverage. An annual food festival in Spain draws thousands of participants in a 100–ton tomato fight. The inimitable, versatile tomato has conquered the cuisines of Spain and Italy, and in America, it is our most popular garden vegetable. Journalist Arthur Allen understands the spell of the tomato and is your guide in telling its dramatic story. He begins by describing in mouthwatering detail the wonder of a truly delicious tomato, then introduces the man who prospected for wild tomato genes in South America and made them available to tomato breeders. He tells the baleful story of enslaved Mexican Indians in the Florida tomato fields, the conquest of the canning tomato by the Chinese Army, and the struggle of Italian tomato producers to maintain a way of life. Allen combines reportage, archival research, and innumerable anecdotes in a lively narrative that, through the lens of today's global market, tells a story that will resonate from greenhouse to dinner table.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Aside from a few mouth-watering odes to its color, shape, and texture, D.C.-based journalist Allen takes a technical approach to tomato appreciation, telling a story primarily about agribusiness through a single popular crop, examining its travels from a seedsman's greenhouse (or lab) to kitchen tables. In accessible but sometimes pedestrian prose, Allen (Villain) meets with many farmers, breeders and canners, examining historical developments and their impacts on various aspects of the industry, for instance the conditions that allowed California to increase its tomato yield from two million tons in 1965 to 11 million tons in 2000. Sections on University of California agriculture professors and vital tomato breeders Jack Hanna and M. Allen Stevens prove educational, as do chapters on field workers in Florida (where the tomato is the number three crop behind oranges and sugar) and on consumers in Italy (as recently as a century ago, most Italians didn't even eat tomatoes). By tackling the topic from the perspectives of business and science, however, Allen engages his readers' heads more than their guts.
