The tomato is bursting | La Presse

What if we really had fun with tomatoes, rather than just sauces and salads? Seed producer Patrice Fortier, who has grown dozens of varieties over the decades, knows a thousand and one ways to prepare them. He prepared a 100% tomato feast for us in his superb summer house in Kamouraska.

A quarter century of tomatoes

Patrice Fortier, an artist by training, gardener, sower, cook and inspiration by profession, founded La société des plantes over 25 years ago in Kamouraska. He knows tomatoes! “When I started, I relied on short-season varieties, but in the end, I found them disappointing. Tomatoes taught me a lot about what we are capable of growing in Quebec and in my region. Today, I never throw away wheelbarrows of tomatoes anymore and I keep finding very good varieties.”

The seven varieties of 2024

There are about thirty tomatoes (with their beautiful detailed descriptions) in the current seed catalogue of The Plant Society.

This year, Patrice and his team have grown seven varieties to be able to offer the seeds.

• Beef Heart
• Heart of Blue
• Ida Gold
• Matt’s Wild Cherry
• Black Early
• Piennolo del Vesuvio
• Persimmon Quince

Check out the tomato seed catalog from La Société des Plantes

A 100% tomato feast

Patrice Fortier gives very informative cooking workshops every month and the one on August 31 and 1^er September is called From the garden to the table 100% tomato. He drew on his corpus of original recipes to prepare a tomato meal from A to Z, on a magnificent early golden evening in mid-August. As he keeps his finest specimens to extract the seeds, the seed merchant had obtained supplies from a few market gardeners who produce “his” varieties on their land.

Tomato water

It can be used in cocktails, in vinaigrette, in a nage for scallops and other seafood or fish, in jelly, etc. Patrice Fortier uses it as a liquid in an absolutely divine sweet flan. There are several ways to obtain tomato water; Patrice’s does not waste any pulp, it is simply the result of defrosting tomato coulis (passata) that can be prepared in large quantities to get through the winter. “You may have already noticed that when defrosting your tomato sauce, the water will float on top. All you need to do is collect this beautiful tasty water to use it in all sorts of ways.” To make his tomato water flan, Patrice reduces the liquid by half in a saucepan and replaces the milk with this concentrate.

Tomato leather

You’ve probably heard of fruit roll-ups. Kids love them. You can make a slightly more adult version with tomatoes and basil. The result is an incredible concentrate—kids will love it too! First, choose a fairly flavorful variety, remove the skin and seeds from the tomatoes (by hand or with a food mill), then cook for a long time on the stove. “I reduce the sauce to concentrate the flavor,” explains Patrice. “I wait until the sauce reaches a certain thickness so that it doesn’t form a puddle on the dehydrator plate. Once I have my coulis consistency, I let it cool and add basil in chiffonade. I don’t want it to cook. I like to use purple basil because I like that kind of drama on the plate, but you can use green. Dehydration can take all day. It depends on the humidity level in the air, but you want to dehydrate more than not enough. For storage, separate the leathers with sheets of parchment paper. » Note that it is possible to dehydrate in the oven, at a very low temperature (around 160 °F).

The leathers can be eaten as is as an aperitif, cut into small squares. Patrice’s most recent discovery? He wrapped a piece of fatouillet à l’ail, sausage from Fou du cochon, in La Pocatière, in tomato leather to make a salty “candy”. With cheese, it shouldn’t be so bad either!

Tomato for dessert

It’s a fruit vegetable, after all! Its versatility is limitless. “The first time I used tomatoes in dessert, it was to make a sorbet with the Green Zebra variety. It was a beautiful shade of green and delicious,” says Patrice. For the meal, culinary artist Nico Fonseca had prepared a spectacular cake filled between layers with tomato jam (a recipe from his Portuguese mother), while the seed producer simmered a creamy tomato water flan. Coincidence or not, a few days later we were served a tomato dessert at the restaurant Au Grasping. Chef Chloé Ouellet created a brown butter financier topped with an orange tomato cream, tomatoes preserved in a wood-fired oven, tomato jam and a crumble. It worked!

Tomato in art

In the Plant Gallery of the Plant Society, there is currently an exhibition entitled Tomato care. On the wall, grouped under the title Some beautiful diseasescolorful macrophotography images transform tomato phytopathologies into works of art. This is the work of Antoine Berton, a plant health specialist and production manager at La Société des Plantes. In the center of the room, a Tomato Staking Fantasy by Patrice Fortier. “In the Kamouraska plain, we cannot stake tomatoes high up as is commonly done. We train them horizontally so that the plants are less sensitive to the wind,” explains the seed grower, who had fun with old tomato stakes and their shadows.