Andrew's ingredient of the month: juicy tomatoes

Finally, it's time to harvest tomatoes! This time of year, tomatoes stand on their own as main ingredients in dishes. Except for greenhouse-grown cherry tomatoes (which are flavourful and produced year-round), now is the only time to buy local vine-ripened tomatoes; and if you're lucky enough to have a vegetable garden, you'll be thinking of ways to use up your harvest. Of course, you can make tomato sauce, salsas and ketchup, but fresh, fully ripe tomatoes are great as the star ingredients of many dishes. Here are just a few recipe ideas from our pages.

First things first: soup
Nothing says fresh like ripe tomatoes in a bowl of gazpacho. This soup spells out generous warm sunshine and love of basic ingredients -- in fact, it describes Spain and her cuisine.Many cooks muck about with gazpacho, but I like to stick as close as possible to the real thing. Armed with your ripest, sweetest tomatoes, your freshest cucumbers and peppers, your most fragrant extra virgin olive oil and our Fresh Gazpacho recipe, you can't go wrong.

When chilly breezes sweep in, turn some of those wonderful "apples of gold", as the Italians call them, into a hot soup. Although warming, the wonderfully simple Tomato Soup with Herbed Fresh Cheese speaks of nothing but fresh harvest.

The basics: sweet and simple pastas
When you have delicious fresh tomatoes, you probably think of pasta -- right? And when tomatoes taste really great, you don't have to add much to your recipe at all. You could try an uncooked fresh tomato sauce or, if you prefer a simple cooked sauce, make Pasta with Tomato Basil Sauce.

Click to continue to more ways to use your fresh, local tomatoes...

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