Vine Tomatoes

Tomatoes did not arrive in Italy until the mid-1500s, where they were met with an initially chilly reception. That’s less than five hundred years, and means that before then a lot of the dishes we think of as quintessentially Italian did not exist in the same form. The word ‘tomato’ itself comes from the Aztec ‘xitomatl’, pronounced ‘ji-tomatel’ and the oldest recipes that call for these members of the nightshade family are guacamole and salsa, not Margherita pizza! 

Vine tomatoes are bigger than cherry tomatoes and much better suited for dishes where you have to blanch and peel them, like Gazpacho or its Spanish equivalent Salmorejo.
These tomatoes are ripened in the Spanish sun (which is more carbon efficient than growing them in a heated UK glasshouse) and their flavour will intensify when slow-roasted: enjoy them as part of a Full English or squished down on bruschetta.