Tinned Tomatoes.
Plus a recipe for Tomato Braised Bean and White Fish Stew with Gremolata.
Welcome to ingredient, where once a month I take a deep dive into some of my favourite seasonal and store cupboard ingredients. This month I’m focusing on tinned tomatoes: the MVP of pretty much any kitchen I know.
Additionally, at the bottom of this post you’ll find my recipe for Tomato Braised Bean and White Fish Stew with Gremolata, which with a side of crusty bread makes a brilliant, adaptable weeknight dinner for two or more. If you’re a paid subscriber, I’m hoping a braised meat dish and a delicious eggy tomato brunch dish (which is not shakshuka!) will be with you shortly. I say hopefully, because writing to you from week 7 of having a broken oven (!) I’m starting to lose the will to cook..!
To receive these recipes, plus access all of the recipes from past newsletters as well as my Kitchen Cupboards interviews, you can upgrade your subscription here. And, if you fancy exploring the archives for more inspiration, last February we were focusing on Tarragon: a delicious, surprisingly versatile herb with a beguiling fragrance that’s delicious in sauces, salads and even poached with the season’s forced rhubarb.
A couple of weeks ago I sent my literary agent a screenshot captioned ‘FFS’. Said screenshot was a publication announcement for food editor and cookbook author Samuel Goldsmith’s new cookbook The Tinned Tomatoes Cookbook: 100 everyday recipes using the most versatile ingredient in your kitchen. You know the one, it’s been on the Instagram feeds of most of the British food establishment these past few weeks.
I wish Samuel the very best with the book, because it is a fantastic idea. I’ve always thought it was a fantastic idea, so much so after sending my agent an email titled ‘The Tinned Tomato Cookbook’ in 2017 we put together a cookbook proposal for said cookbook and pitched it around, only to be told by literally everyone that ‘there would not be enough of a market for this book to bother publishing it’ (I’m paraphrasing here). So you can understand that of course whilst I want Samuel’s book to be a success (because I know too well the blood, sweat and tears that go into producing a cookbook) why I sent my agent a ‘for fucks sake’. Because I wanted to be the one to write that cookbook.
At the time, I honestly did not understand their reaction and rejection (especially as single ingredient cookbooks were all the rage back then), and I’m glad that at least one publisher has finally championed the idea because I think tinned tomatoes are one of the most versatile things you can have in the kitchen: they serve as bases for stews and sauces, they add vegetables and summer flavours to dishes all year round, and they add body in places where only the vibrance of a tomato will do. They’re one of the few ingredients I buy in bulk, and I don’t know what I’d do if someone told me that I was not allowed to cook with tinned tomatoes anymore.
Tinned tomatoes are very much something that came out of the 1800’s. When Frenchman Nicolas Appert invented a process which we now know as canning to preserve foods for France’s soldiers in 1809 it seemed natural that we’d start canning tomatoes too, which were growing in popularity in places like America where the canning process would soon be refined and industrialised for the masses.
Whilst today there are some fun niche ones out there (I for one love tinned cherry tomatoes for adding extra sweetness to recipes, and where you do want them to remain whole yet a little cooked down in the finished dish - a great substitute for fresh when they’re not in season) in a typically well-stocked-with-tinned-tomatoes pantry you’ll probably find two main types: chopped and plum.
Chopped tomatoes are the most common. They’re great: they cook down really well in sauces, but still leave a few chunks behind to add a little interest when that is something you’re after, say in a chunky stew, vs a meat ragu where you want a more uniform texture that will cling to the pasta. This is where the whole plum tomatoes come in: by crushing them into the pan with your hands you’ve added the same flavour as you would with a can of chopped tomatoes, but the tomato will melt more readily in the sauce.
With whole plum tomatoes it is also easier to use just one where you want to add just a bit of tomato: when I do this I tend to keep the rest of the tin decanted into a plastic tub in the fridge to use in last minute pasta sauces, other recipes, or even when fresh chopped tomatoes are called for in curries during winter. That is not to say that chopped tomatoes can’t be scaled down in recipes from the ubiquitous 400g tin (unless you’re in America where the double size tins - cans to you - are more common). Yes half size tins are available, but I’ve also found they freeze brilliantly.
And, whilst we’re on the subject of tinned tomatoes in America, can a British brand or retailer hurry up and launch fire roasted canned tomatoes here? I don’t really care that Sainsbury’s now do tater tots marketed as hash brown bites, I want to be able to cook with American fire roasted tomatoes!
As with many common preserved ingredients, brands of tinned tomatoes vary wildly in quality. Most food people I know swear by Mutti Italian tinned tomatoes (as well as their tubed tomato puree which is also the one I use at home, though the Waitrose Essentials one is also rather good) which are excellent, and which food writer
‘s recent take on Marcella Hanzen’s genius cult tinned tomato pasta sauce recipe (I read a brilliant story about the history of it in a copy of Food & Wine I picked up last summer during a layover in Georgia which is happily online) recently informed me also come in a finely chopped version I need to track down.
I do buy Mutti plum tomatoes because you can get them in bulk from Costco, but I also admit that the bulk of what I buy are budget basement tinned tomatoes which yes, sometimes have the odd unripe chunk in, but also are actually rather good in most recipes. Quality of your tinned tomatoes matters where they are the star, but when there is an awful lot else going on, I honestly don’t think it matters if I use the cheap ones, or a fancier tin I picked up at the farm shop because it had a fun label. Which is why I stock both: use quality tined tomatoes where they matter, but cheaper ones elsewhere. Better quality ones tend to on the whole be less acidic and have a richer flavour, so think about why you’re adding to them to a dish in the first place when you’re making your choice.
There was one silver lining to the failed attempt to pitch a tinned tomato cookbook, and that is it was how I met the editor who commissioned my second cookbook One Pan Pescatarian. So because of this - and because the whole broken oven thing means my recipe development schedule is an absolute mess at the moment - I thought I’d share one of my favourite recipes from the book in which a tin of tomatoes is the star, as well as a few more notes on how I’d change the recipe today.
Tomato Braised Bean and White Fish Stew with Gremolata
Serves: 2 (easily doubled), Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 35 minutes
This is a lovely fresh stew that I make with cod but is nice with any chunky piece of white, sustainable fish you have available. I didn’t have any white wine on hand when I first made this so, with a nod to Nigella, I made with with white vermouth instead. It added a really unusual element to the tomato stew that I quite liked, but found rather polarising, so afterwards I reverted to using dry white wine. Try it if you want to enhance the sweetness of tomatoes and the fish stock.
That was the headnote for this recipe that appears in One Pan Pescatarian. Today I’ve got a few more notes for you, firstly that for braised fish dishes like this I use hake these days for a better flake and flavour. But of course, my note that you should use whatever white chunky fish that is sustainable where you live still stands. Also, I’d say that this is a place where using jarred beans rather than tinned for extra creaminess would be an excellent upgrade: I’ve written a bit more about jarred vs. tinned beans a little here, and if you’re UK based like me,
has done an excellent comparison of different tinned and jarred butter bean brands (which will in part apply to white beans for this recipe) including flavour, price, ingredient and sustainability information here.Finally, if you can’t find good quality fish stock for this, just use vegetable instead. The supermarket stuff is, as far as I’ve sampled, universally terrible.
1 small onion
1 celery stick
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large garlic clove
75ml dry white wine
400g tin cannellini beans (or 1/2 jar white beans)
400g tin chopped tomatoes
150ml fresh fish stock (or vegetable stock)
2 sustainable cod (or hake) fillets
freshly ground sea salt and black pepper
For the Gremolata
1 large garlic clove
small handful of flat leaf parsley
zest of 1/2 lemon
small pinch of sea salt
Peel and finely chop the onion and the celery stick.
Heat the olive oil in a large, lidded shallow casserole dish over a medium heat and gently fry the onions and the celery for about 10 minutes until they are soft, but not browned. Peel and finely chop the garlic and add it to the pan, gently frying for a further minute until aromatic.
Add the white wine to the pan and allow it to bubble gently while you drain the beans and add them to the pan with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Then add the tinned tomatoes, followed by the stock. Turn up the heat to high until it is bubbling, then reduce it to low to simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
Make the gremolata by peeling and finely chopping the garlic, finely chopping the parsley and mixing them together in a small bowl along with the lemon zest and sea salt. Set aside.
Nestle the two fish fillets between the beans and season the tops with salt and pepper. Place the lid on the pan and allow the fish to steam for 10 minutes until the fish is cooked through and you can flake it gently with a fork.
Serve the bean stew in two warm bowls, each topped with a fish fillet, and the gremolata piled on top of the fish.
On the cookbook aspect, how many many article ideas as a freelancer have I pitched that have been turned down only to be published in a matter of few weeks under the by-line of a male staff writer.
I always wondered about fire roasted and San marzano. I know what they’re supposed to be, but are they real or just a marketing gimmick?