Tomatoes – the Love Apples: Indonesia

Adam and Eve chewed on one and looked what happened!. The delicious tomato has a lot to answer for but in Indonesia they are used a lot in cooking. Some people have them in their salad every day, or drink their juice first thing in the morning before breakfast, or whenever they crave a fruity, refreshing taste.

Gastronome and epicurean el supremo, Suryatini N. Ganie, explains about this delightful veggie:

For the Love of Love Apples

All right, let us call things by their familiar names.

We here in Indonesia call the love apple (a translation of the French pommes d’amour) the tomat, and in English it is a tomato. This is a less romantic name, perhaps, but more down to earth.

The tomato’s path to globalization by traveling in the luggage of adventurous men remains rather romantic, however.

Some say the fruit was brought from Peru to Napoli by Italian sailors. Other food historians argue Spain was the first European country to taste the fruit, in South America where the tomato was native, because of the Spanish presence in Mexico and Peru.
Under this theory, the seeds were passed on to Italy through the Kingdom of Naples, which was ruled by the Spanish in the 16th century. The tomato then went traveling around Europe, and the Dutch brought it to Indonesia.

They were a bit “lazy” to grow here at first because the first tomatoes ever known were small and sourish. They were called cangkediro in South Sumatra.

In Palembang they also ate the still-green tomatoes. Soon the cangkediro was accepted in other regions too, and the small tomato is mentioned in old cookery books.

In a Tio Ciu (Chinese-Indonesian) book on cooking, five green cangkediro were added to a fresh-tasting soup. The small tomatoes were quartered and put in the soup after the broth came to a boil.

And with their renowned udang wociap, made from big prawns, a home-made tomato sauce was the traditional accompaniment. But in many cookery books of the same period, the small tomato was only a souring agent like the belimbing sayur (sour star fruit). The tomato lends a more suave sourness, while the belimbing sayur gives a specific sour flavor.

Some other cookery books do not use tomato at all.

As Indonesians become more familiar with foreign flavors, the tomat is changing rapidly, be it in flavor or in size. Sauces made from tomatoes have become a daily necessity for many cooks, and even a must at roadside stalls. People eating there usually add sweet soy sauce with a dollop of bottled tomato sauce to their food, or a mix of tomato and chili sauce.

When the weather climbs to more than 30 degrees Celsius, people make wedang tomat, a tomato drink with thinly sliced tomatoes (skin on!), sugar and lots of ice cubes. “Now I feel really cool,” my friend said as I watched her slice a big tomato rapidly.

On the other hand, even when the temperature is soaring, the Manadonese of North Sulawesi make their hotter-than-hot dabu-dabu sambal with tomatoes and chili galore!

Coming back to the tomato itself, there are now many varieties growing abundantly in the mountainous highlands. Hectares of tomato plants with big red fruit lend color to the fields of Sukabumi, Malang, Bali and other cool regions in our tropical country.

The most renowned are the marglobe and roma, hailing from Lembang, near Bandung. Local farmers call them tomat apel or tomat gondola. They have a rather thick skin.

The tomat globe is considered the best variety by farmers. There are also less known varieties, such as tomatoes that look like mini-papayas and have a longish form.

Then you have a tomato with a curved form in the villages near Bandung. The tomat sayur is small, can be reddish, yellowish or green and is available daily at traditional markets, ready to be added to their sambal terasi.

Medium sized tomatoes with a thin, orange-red skin are the most available variety anywhere in Indonesia. Last but not least, people who like to add love apples to their salad will be pleased when tomat ceri or cherry tomatoes are available!

Suryatini N. Ganie