According to the internet, tomato season in New York ends in October. Initially, this surprised me – tomatoes in fall? But sure enough, last weekend when we walked through the farmer’s market at Fort Greene park, there was a huge display of heirloom tomatoes in all the colors of the tomato rainbow. Likely, the last of the season. It was a melancholic moment for me – the last remnants of summer sun, bottled up in these oblong orange, yellow, green, purple, and red fruits (yes, a tomato is a fruit). 

It made me think back to “peak” tomato season – this time frame doesn’t have an exact start or end date, but you know it when you see it. Your feed will fill with caprese salads and tomato tarts, the heirloom displays at the farmer’s market have lines down the block, and all the tomato girls come out of hibernation. 

As a fellow tomato girl, I, too, look forward to this time of year. It’s why, when we signed up for our CSA back in March, I vehemently insisted we get the four-week heirloom tomato add-on. Little did I know just how many tomatoes it would include. 

Week twelve of Greene Harvest’s CSA was the first week of heirloom tomatoes. I was beyond excited to see what was in store. For the next four weeks, we would be the lucky recipients of farm-fresh heirloom tomatoes. In addition to this bonus bounty we also could look forward to the usual late summer suspects: stone fruit, corn, eggplant, and fresh herbs. We also started to see a sneak preview of fall: leeks, onion, and squash.

When it came time to pick up our harvest, however, I realized that I had made one mistake. Because an heirloom tomato add-on was offered, I had (incorrectly) assumed that this was the only way we could secure peak tomato-season tomatoes. In reality, each week we ended up getting double tomatoes: one set from our regularly scheduled programming and another bag filled to the brim with every variety of heirloom you can imagine. Bowl(s) of tomatoes became a permanent feature on our counters. “Tomato recipes” were at the top of my search history. We ate tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For four weeks, we were tomato rich. 

The first thing I did when we brought home our first batch of heirloom tomatoes was to line them up and try to identify each variety. This proved to be significantly more challenging than expected because there are literally thousands of different heirloom tomato varieties. I attempted to use the photo search feature and each time it would turn up five different possible names (all of them, vaguely nonsensical): 

• Tomatoes streaked with red and orange passed for any of the following: Striped Cavern, Tigerella, Mr. Stripey, Speckled Roman
• The bright yellow bulbs could have been Cosmonauts, HillBillies, or Sunrays
• I searched for pictures of Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, and Chocolate Stripe tomatoes to try to ID those with a pink/purple hue and a slight green tinge 
• The only name I found for the smallest tomatoes in the batch – red, perfectly round with black splotches – was Red Charcoal, although those reference photos weren’t a perfect match
• Much to my dismay, we never got any Green Zebras 😦 

The thing with tomatoes is that they don’t keep forever. The last thing I wanted was to let any of them go to waste (especially since these things typically come with a high price tag). Even though we were getting them at wholesale prices, I knew we would have to come up with a list of tomato-heavy recipes, stat. 

The first night, I made a cold noodle salad with peanut sauce, chock-full of tomatoes. I was initially skeptical as I prefer my savory food to be served on the warmer side, but I trusted the process and the combination of acidic tomatoes, rich, spicy sweet peanut sauce (chili crisp was a key ingredient) won me over. The cold noodles were refreshing – a perfect meal on a sweaty summer evening. 

Over the next few weeks, tomatoes made their way into many more recipes ranging widely in complexity and flavor profile: 

• The Beach Sando: tomatoes (sliced), cheddar cheese, salami, and pesto mayo on toasted sourdough bread; wrap in foil and enjoy beachside with salt and vinegar chips. 
• Sweet and sour eggplant, tomatoes, and chickpeas – this recipe is a great way to use up several CSA items all in one go, is high in protein (hello, chickpeas), and features one of my new favorite condiments: pomegranate molasses. We’ve made this recipe multiple times. One time as part of a Mediterranean week-night menu alongside charred green beans and lemony yogurt and garlicky chicken with lemon-anchovy sauce – 10/10, great meal. Another time alongside kofta and a cucumber tzatziki sauce – 10/10, another great meal.
• Caprese pasta salad featuring freezer-pesto, mozzarella pearls, sliced salami, and sliced heirlooms. This was a side for our Labor Day menu, featuring a miso cabbage slaw, an upside down peach cake, and the BEST hot dogs I’ve ever eaten (courtesy of our CSA beef-add-on).  

• Summer Beans with Corn Aioli – we tweaked a Molly Baz original to use sliced heirlooms instead of cherry tomatoes and it worked perfectly. The next day we experienced the sweetest kind of serendipity: being able to make a full blown meal without going to the store. We somehow had everything on hand to make an invention of our own: Crab Benedicts with corn aioli instead of hollandaise sauce, served with breakfast hash browns (featuring CSA peppers and onions). 
• We enjoyed many iterations of the tomato/stonefruit salad – you can never go wrong with tomatoes in a salad. 
• NYT cooking features a 5-star recipe for Tomato Leek Gratin that helped me use up some aging tomatoes and leeks. Shockingly simple, all you do is cook tomatoes and leek in the oven and serve with bread. 
• Hands down, my all-time favorite tomato application is freshly sliced heirloom on a bagel with cream cheese. My go-to bagel order is a toasted sesame with scallion cream cheese. On multiple occasions, I took my bagel home and topped it with a slice of peak summer CSA tomato. It is always *chef’s kiss*. 

My proudest tomato moment was a date-night I planned for my partner and I. Whenever we inch closer to the end of summer, I start to panic. I worry I didn’t get the chance to do all the summer things I wanted to do. Inspired by this anxious urgency (and by Dan Pelosi’s Buy One, Galette One Free summer menu), I decided to plan my ideal summer date night. A picnic featuring:

• Plum melon tomato and prosciutto salad with a chili crisp dressing
• Arugula with white beans, italian sausage, and chopped heirloom tomatoes 
• Tomato galette with semolina crust 
• Plum torte for dessert 

We packed everything up and trekked to the park. We laid out our blanket, opened a bottle of wine, and proceeded to feast. We soaked in the late summer evening: fresh grass, the occasional off-leash dog looking for a snack, and more than a few wasps (whatcha gonna do). It was perfect. 

Just writing this, a part of me wishes we could fast-forward to the next tomato season. I miss the vibrancy of summer produce, the fresh flavors, the counter overflowing with fruit and veg. 

But, if I’m honest with myself, I also recall that when week four of four of heirlooms rolled around, a small part of me was relieved. The tomato gold rush had concluded and with it the need to consume tomatoes around the clock. Fall and winter also have their own special qualities. These colder months bring you in to hunker down and cozy up with a warm beverage and a hearty meal. It’s a time for rest and recovery. A much needed rejuvenation to make sure that when the next tomato season rolls around, the Earth is ready to give you its best. 

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Honorable Mentions

Of course, not every meal was tomatoes. Below are some of my other favorites from late August/early September: 

• Zucchini fennel cake – an original by Brooklyn baker, Jordan Smith. I subscribe to his substack and his recipes are always timely and unique. This recipe features an optional cream cheese whipped topping, but the cake stands all on its own. 
• Spaghetti squash with pesto pasta and pesto meatballs – for some reason, every single spaghetti squash recipe heavily features cheese. As my partner is dairy-avoidant, I came up with the idea to mix it with half a bag of pasta, coat it in pesto, and serve it with pesto meatballs. This was brilliant and I would 100% make this again. Delicious. 
• Plum coffee cake – from Red Currant Bakery. Instead of making plum butter, I used up the rest of my homemade cherry jam and it turned out great. We brought it to a friend’s bowling alley birthday and it was a huge hit.