The first of the brandywine tomatoes

This is the very first of my brandywine tomatoes, picked exactly a week ago and eaten with mozzarella and fresh basil, lightly drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. It was lovely – the taste wasn’t intense (but then again you don’t expect it with tomatoes of this size/type), but it was very pleasant and the texture of the flesh was lovely and velvety. In other words, not at all like the beefsteak tomatoes you often get in the shops. As well as being an out-there shape, this specimen was an out-there size, too – about five inches across the bottom! It will be a while before any of its fellows are ripe enough to pick so int the meantime we’ll have to content ourselves with the Gardener’s Pearls and Gardener’s Delights, which are coming in a steady stream at the moment!