Tomatoes are the country's summer staple. During the long weekends, home gardeners will be away from home and force planting the tomatoes.
Tomatoes are usually seen in soups, salads and delicious sandwiches but in restaurants, chefs are getting the plant a million miles away from its comfort zone. They innovatively gave a make-over, from simple tomatoes into pudding, cocktails and caviar.
Tomatoes with passion fruit and a sweetened goat's milk pudding are served in Sean Connelly's The Grill located in Auckland. A pre-dessert course of tomato and watermelon with mint custard is served by fine dining chef Michael Meredith. Laura Forest and Ed Verner produced a green tomato and vine leaf soda for their pop-up eatery Pasture during the winter days while there wasn't a seasoned fruit to be found.
A panna cotta was made on MasterChef NZ. At the Cuisine maganize's Good Food Award restaurant of the year, Sidart, chef Sid Sahrawat blends tomatoes with garlic and lemon verbena, then gathers its juice, freezes and shake it to make a "snow" that's dish up with king fish. Last summer, tomato sorbet has been offered for customers in an ice cream store called Giappo.
Everyone from five-star to home cooks and supermarkets wish for tomatoes in its moment of action.
Last year, tomato gets the award of countdown's best new line award. A marble-sized, pre-packed jellybean variety is the new face of a food that won the award.
Tomatoes are having its moment from being ever-present loose red globes in the summer or flavorless hot-housed Australian imports in winter.
Tomato marketplace has changed radically in the last decade, and "there are a lot of new varieties out there", according to Warren Frost, Turners & Growers national development manager.
"We travel, essentially, every second year to other parts of the world, including Europe, where they develop a lot of these new varieties," says Frost. "We taste them and work out what we believe is the next big winner."
"Demand for cocktail-sized "snackable" tomatoes is increasing," he added.