Native Heirloom Tomatoes Starting to Appear in Markets Now…

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Every year I look forward to the months after the Christmas holidays, because unless storms have ravaged agricultural areas, the produce in markets only gets better and better. That is, of course, until the wicked heat of the summer months brings it all to a sweet end with all those fabulous tropical fruits. These beautiful native “heirloom” tomatoes are one of my favorites… with thin skins, tasty and less acidic flesh, I love these in simply thrown together salads, or mashed with some bagoong and lasona for a classic Northern condiment called KBL. They are starting to appear in markets now.

Other older posts on native tomatoes here, here and here.

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10 Responses

  1. Agree, MM. It is hard to eat another tomato once one has feasted on an ‘heirloom’ variety. Jeez, still another 5 months in these parts before we can enjoy …

  2. I bought a couple plastic bags of this for 45php/kilo a couple of days ago.
    Delicious when (s)mashed by hand, with a good bagoong alamang and/or salted eggs with cilantro then eaten with lots of steamed rice.

    Diet food, this is not!

  3. The most importunate curiosity can’t budge me to try usually gougy priced heritage tomatoes although I’ll go as far with hothouse ones sold on the vine. This is why fellow readers of this blog such as BettyQ make me envious when they share pictures of their first harvest https://goo.gl/QKWFo8 (although they stir the opposite sentiment from me come late summer when for sure they get inundated with rapidly ripening tomatoes.) Anyway, these naturalized Filipino tomatoes of the current post have been obviously passed by by the gene technologists, those busybodies who bred away all that made freely pollinated strains delicious in exchange for size uniformity, long shelf-life and durability in transit. It was the horticultural equivalent of Faust.

  4. beautiful. my mom loves to put them on top of just-cooked rice to soften them up a bit before mashing them with salt or patis.

  5. Hi marketman, where do you normally find these fruits and veggies? Can you suggest a market where i can find a lot of native philippine fruits and veggies particularly in Manila? Thanks

  6. Jackie, there are several markets around Manila. In Quezon City on Sundays, the Centris market near Quezon Avenue is quite comprehensive. On a daily basis, Farmer’s Market in Cubao has a good selection. On Saturdays, the Salcedo market in Makati is the most chi-chi, with mostly cooked food products. At the FTI complex in Taguig, I go to the AANI weekend market, and it’s a bit chaotic but has a decent selection of produce at good prices and there is lots of parking. On Sunday, the Legazpi market in Makati is a similar market to Salcedo. For fish, the Seaside Market on Roxas boulevard is small but carries lots of stuff. There are also markets in Alabang and lots of other places…

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