Usually there is a morning in October when you open the greenhouse door and the air inside smells more damp and autumnal than steamy and summery. This year the arrival of that moment is taking its time, with the beautiful golden and warm early October trying to fool us that it is still summer. On a bright afternoon we can almost convince ourselves there’s still time for more ripening, and that the green tomatoes can still do their thing.
But the tomatoes know. The plants have been slowing for weeks, their lower leaves yellowing and curling, the trusses at the top still hung with fruit that has stayed stubbornly, glossily green since September. The low sun abandons the glass in a few short hours now, and nights are sliding below the temperatures tomatoes need to colour properly. Ripening on the vine stalls when there is this little daylight and when the greenhouse is this cold. Leaving the fruit there only invites mould and grey rot.
The moment has come to admit it: cut your losses and clear the plants.
First though, there is a final harvest of sorts. Any tomato that has reached full size and has a faint pinking at the blossom end will ripen on a windowsill, or more evenly in a drawer or paper bag with a ripe banana or apple, whose ethylene speeds things along. Some gardeners pull the whole plant and hang it upside down in a shed or garage, picking from it into November. What’s left are the hard and undeniably green ones. But they are not a failure so much as they are different ingredient.
Green tomatoes are sharp, firm and faintly citrus-like, closer in the kitchen to a green vegetable than to their red selves, and with a hint of cooking apple about them. The obvious destination is chutney, and a green tomato and apple chutney, dark with brown sugar and vinegar, is the classic answer to October gluts for good reason. But they also make a bright, sour salsa when charred and blitzed with chilli and lime, and a punchy pickle sliced thin into spiced vinegar. Southern Indian cooking uses them as the sour ingredient in tart curries, and you can also make a cake grated green tomato much as you might use courgette.
But if you only try one thing, make dukkah fried green tomatoes. This is my go to with my underripe tomatoes. Dukkah is the Egyptian blend of toasted nuts, seeds and spices, usually hazelnuts, sesame, coriander and cumin. It’s simple to make, or you can buy a jar in the supermarket. Mix it roughly half and half with panko breadcrumbs, so the coating has both crunch and fragrance, and add in a very good pinch of crunchy sea salt. Cut the firmest tomatoes into thick slices, about the width of a finger, and pat them dry. Dip each slice into beaten egg, then press it into the dukkah crumb on both sides. Fry in a shallow layer of hot oil until deep golden, turning once, and drain briefly on kitchen paper.
The green tomato is transformed by this treatment, its outside crisp, warm and nutty with cumin, the inside soft but still sharp. Do not eat them straight from the pan as they have the same weird heat-retaining abilities as the red fruit. Let them sit and cool for a minute or two, and then squeeze a little lemon over and dollop with salted yoghurt and get (carefully) tucked in.
Then there’s only the clearing. Strip out the plants and add them to the compost unless there was blight. Sweep the floor and leave the greenhouse to its long winter rest. The fruit you did save will turn red on the windowsill, one by one, for weeks yet.