When a Tomato Isn't a Tomato
Foraging for Alternatives
I like tomatoes. There’s something so special about biting into the first one of the summer, sun-warmed and picked straight from the plant. Unfortunately, the west coast of Scotland isn’t really the ideal climate for growing them: we’re not known for our hot sunny summers! There are some foods I am self-sufficient in – garlic, kale, and plums, to name a few – but tomatoes definitely do not fall into that category. I’ve never managed to grow enough to preserve all we need for the rest of the year, so tins of tomatoes are a staple in our house during the out-of-season months. Tipping a can of them into a curry or stew, or into a pot with some chopped veg to have on top of pasta, is just so easy to do! I am, however, always trying to reduce my dependency on purchased food, and be just a bit more self-sufficient. (There’s a whole other conversation to be had about how absolute self-sufficiency probably isn’t even possible, and isn’t actually my ultimate goal, but let’s leave that for another day!)
Anyways, I have a few different options if I want to try to be self-sufficient in tomatoes. The first of these is I could give over all the space in my polytunnel to tomatoes and grow only them. No squash, no beans, just tomatoes. Honestly, that’s not something I want to do. Yes, I like tomatoes, but I like other food too!
The second option is I could drastically reduce the amount of tomatoes I eat. Enjoy them in summer, can any excess to use in winter, and stay away from the tinned ones in the supermarket for the rest of the year. Sounds simple, but I’m not sure if that is something I have the willpower to do. They’re just so convenient…
Well, it turns out there’s actually a third option. I have something else growing in my garden that makes a pretty good tomato substitute!
I’ve known for a few years that the hips of the Japanese Rose (Rosa rugosa) are edible, but I’d never got around to experimenting with them until very recently. As the name suggests, Japanese Rose is not native to my part of the world. It was introduced to Britain in the 19th century and since then has made itself at home, becoming a popular garden plant. In some places it has actually become a bit of a problem, and I know it would happily take over my garden if left unchecked!
Most of the rugosa in my garden has finished flowering, and the spiky bushes are now covered in large, shiny red rosehips. They are much bigger than the hips of the native Dog Rosa (Rosa canina) and do bear a resemblance to cherry tomatoes. I picked a bowlful of them and decided to finally see for myself if they were as good as I’d heard people say. I started off by pulling off the dried up flower bit at the end, then chopped them into quarters and scooped out all the seeds and hairs inside them with a teaspoon. The hairs can be irritating so while this was a fiddly job, it’s worth doing well!
It’s important to make sure you’ve picked good firm rosehips as soft ones may be infested with beasties. I have to apologise to the two earwigs I accidentally chopped while I was cutting the rosehips in half – I didn’t know you were living in there! I’m sorry!
To cook the rosehips I followed a very rough recipe that @reasonablygoodlife had posted on their Instagram a couple of years ago – this is also where I first heard about them being edible. The instructions were along the lines of “simmer in home brew with garlic and herbs”. It being a Friday evening, I had just opened a bottle of last year’s Bramble and Elderberry wine, so I poured a good glug of it into the pot with my chopped rosehips and a few cloves of garlic, and simmered it until it was all soft (it took about 15 minutes, I think). I then tasted it: it was sooo sweet, but definitely tomatoey! A good pinch of wild garlic salt and some apple scrap vinegar reduced the sweetness to a better level, so I wuzzed it all up to make a thick, bright orange, very tomato-esque puree.
Friday night is homemade pizza night in our house, and I was keen to try out my new “nomato” sauce. Would it pass the ultimate test – would my son detect a difference in his pizza?! I rolled out the dough, spread on the puree, and added various other things from the garden (chopped spinach and courgette this time) before topping it with cheese and some freshly-picked sliced tomato. Into the oven it went and... success! Both my husband and son ate it quite happily without noticing anything out of the ordinary, and neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned when I told them!
I picked more rosehips and made another bigger batch of the sauce the next day, and put five portions of it into the freezer for future pizza nights. There are still plenty more of them in my garden, and will be for the next couple of months, so I’ll probably try to squirrel away more of them into the freezer to use over the winter. I’m not sure how well they’d stand up as a substitute for tomatoes in something like a Bolognese sauce, but I’m happy with my first little experiment with them, and glad I finally got around to trying it after years of saying “I really should do something with those rosehips!” I can’t guarantee I’ll be completely avoiding buying tins of tomatoes from now on, but it’s a little step in the right direction…
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It's so nice to use something you have in abundance. I'm glad you found a good way to use your rosehips. I, like you, pick my self sufficient crops carefully. Tomatoes aren't one of mine, either, and don't want them to be. I squirrel away the odd pint or quart of sauce, but I'm fine with buying canned tomatoes to make sauce. I'd rather grow a variety of good things to eat fresh and preserve some extras of everything. The things I prefer to be self sufficient in are generally not available in good quality or expensive.
That’s amazing. I would never have thought of doing that! We planted Rosa rugosa into our shelter belt hedge last year and it’s got a few hips on it already, but in furniture years I can see it’s going to provide a sizeable crop. Thankyou for the inspiration!