My pick this week are those fantastic sweet snacking tomatoes in punnets. Spring is when the new season for these start, the quality and taste improves and the price comes back, and this year they are a little earlier than normal. These tomatoes have now displaced the traditional truss and field tomatoes to some extent and allowed the whole category to grow.
The reason for this is that field and truss tomatoes have been put under such tremendous price pressure by the major supermarkets that the big growers have had to grow the highest yielding varieties to make a small profit. These varieties are not so good to eat. However, at this stage the punnets of snacking tomatoes still have great flavour and when on special are actually quite reasonably priced. So this week we have yellow snacking and sweet delights both on special and they equate to $10 kg. The taste of both will make you wonder why you would ever bother with the others.
HOW TO PICK
Look for brightly coloured tomatoes with firm, shiny skin. Turn the punnet upside down to check fruit is fresh looking throughout.
HOW TO STORE
We don't encourage refrigerating tomatoes as doing so has the tendency to reduce flavour and ability to ripen well.