The Granny Smith Ap...ooops I mean Tomato!

Granny Smith tomato would be excellent for making salse verde - a great substitute for those golf ball sized tomatillos. It's also great for fried green tomatoes - the big slices are nice and firm and hold together very well when frying or grilling. Also try full slices on a burger or sandwich for a great new taste experience or cut them up in wedges for salads.

Here's some confirmation from Ed Eckhoff, a farmers market grower and vendor in Woodland, California, who trialed Granny Smith when it first became available. He agrees the big slices are great for grilling and frying. Another vendor there grills them, people try them, then go to Ed to buy fresh Granny Smith tomatoes to take home. They taste better than other green tomatoes, which are often bitter, and they are very firm, so they hold together on the grill.

When tomatoes are harvested, whether green or red, no more sugars and acids go from the plants to the fruits. That's why green tomatoes normally taste pretty lousy. The point of Granny Smith is that it offers things ordinary varieties don't. First, it is extremely firm, so it can be diced for regular salsa and for Salsa Verde without becoming a mushy mess. Or, for Salsa Verde, use like tomatillos processed in your blender.

For those who want to know, Granny Smith is not a so-called GMO biotech variety. It was bred using conventional techniques, as was everything else in this brochure. Maturity is 72 days, and disease resistance includes V1, F1, St, ASC It should be widely available in seed catalogs and greenhouses by now.

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