When Julius Roberts planted his tomatoes in February, he knew that, come July, he would be greeted by plants much bigger than he is, some growing as tall as two and a half meters. (For the Americans, that’s eight feet and change.) He also knew that, come August, then September, October, even early November, his larder would be spilling over with sunlit fruit as the season’s leaves started to turn and the hot weather relented in the English countryside, where he lives. According to Roberts, a 31-year-old farmer and cook, when you’ve got a good tomato, all you need is olive oil and salt, maybe a piece of toast rubbed with garlic. But when you’ve got a glut of good tomatoes, so many that you can’t keep up, it’s time to reacquaint yourself with the stove and make a curry.
This recipe, from Roberts’s debut cookbook, “The Farm Table” (Ten Speed Press, 2024), helps you make a sizable dent in your basket, as it calls for roasting two and a half pounds of tomatoes whole, slowly, until they slacken and reduce, concentrating in flavor and running red, orange and gold juices all over the pan like watercolors. As they roast in the oven, you can build their spiced coconut bath on the stove. A slow, steady cooking process is part of this curry’s promise, so take your time frying down the onions in the base, until they’re properly sweet and tender. Roberts says he drew inspiration from South Asian curries, in which you temper whole spices in oil to enjoy their musky fullness; it’s different than using just ground, though a little turmeric pigments the sauce an eggy gold. While eating this curry, he quite likes stumbling across a cardamom pod, star anise or cinnamon stick and sucking the rich gravy out of it, the individual spice perfuming that one bite with unparalleled strength. I quite like the coriander seeds, which soften and lend grassiness, an echo of the tomatoes’ vines, which themselves carry an inescapable aroma.
Recipe: Tomato Curry
When Roberts recently had a bag of ripe tomatoes in his car, the vehicle filled with the most reassuring scent, of not just the sweet fruit but the plant itself — a full-bodied perfume of the sticky vines, the floppy leaves. It’s a scent you can know only if you’ve ever grown your own tomatoes or if you make this curry, which is why Roberts recommends roasting some of the tomatoes still on their vine, as the Edenic fragrance lends so much character in the end. A mix-and-match of colors, sizes and varieties results in the prettiest painting, like hot-air balloons scattered across a mustard sky. Not unlike a Kerala-style egg curry, this sunglow variation is less a curry made of its main ingredient than a curry starring it. In the end, after the tomatoes finish roasting and the plush, golden coconut milk reaches its ideal texture — thicker than broth and looser than cream, Roberts says — the two can marry. Nestle the tomatoes into the curry and watch as they bob in their bath. Taste until you love it, as Roberts writes in his book in regard to seasoning: “It should be delicious, so take the time to make it so.”
As I cook this curry now, in my kitchen in rainy New York City, I’m reminded of the time when I was 8 and planted cherry tomatoes in our backyard in Georgia. I found an especially fecund plot in the corner of our yard, by the tall trees with all the mosquitoes. I took a hoe and cleared out that patch so it was only dirt. Then, I planted the seeds and babied them for weeks, until one day, I got bored of role-playing farmer and forgot about them. At the end of that summer, I walked over to my abandoned tomato patch and found the greenest bush bejeweled with shiny red ornaments. A couple of decades later, I know that this curry is a reminder of those early years, when the idea of planting seeds, watching them grow and reaping the fruit was the most surefire way to experience summer’s crown jewel.
