Hi, I am planning on cooking this this weekend. :) I was wondering if you usually use tomatoes or yoghurt? The recipe says that either one is fine, but I think they would result in quite different tastes. The dish in the photo looks like you used yoghurt. Or do you use tomatoes and add yoghurt at the end?

Yes, the picture indeed shows it cooked with yoghurt, which is used often in cooking in India when tomatoes are out of season. I often cook it with tomatoes too. Try with tomatoes first.

this brings up the topic of umami. It's what the Japanese have called the 'savoury taste'. We all know that we have taste bubs in our mouths that detect saltiness, sweetness, sourness and bitterness, and now we have savouriness. The Japanese put this down to the presence of an amino acid, called glutamic acid, which may be more familiar to us as the sodium salt, monosodium glutamate. Its called mono sodium as glutamic acid has two acid groups, but only one is reacted with a sodium atom.

For those who object to this flavour enhancer in our food (I for one!) it must be pointed out that many foods contain the glutamate amino acid, often it is the most abundant amino acid present in a protein. It is abundant in meat protein, tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese, and of course soy sauce.

So, if we add tomatoes to a dish, we not only add flavour (detected in our nose, not in our mouth) but a natural flavour enhancer (should that be 'taste enhancer'?). And don't think it is only a meat thing, often in ingredients one sees 'hydrolysed vegetable protein'. This is vegetable protein broken down into its amino acid components (or partly), of which glutamate is a major part. It's a way the food producers sneak in msg without having to be explicit on the ingredients label.

A tip, if the food goes well with steak, it probably contains glutamate, so fruit/brown sauce contains glutamate!

And it would be advisable to take it easy on Monosodium glutamate as tests on rats showed harmful affects to the nervous system.

Ok I will try it with tomatoes first. :)

Does using tomato puree and fresh tomatoes make much of a difference? Sorry if these questions have been asked before... I have gone through quite a few pages on the forum but did not find an answer to this.

Thanks so much !

Hi, Fresh tomatoes has a slightly sour taste while tinned plum tomatoes a sweetish one, though i use both (not together)but I prefer to use tinned plum ones for dry(ish) lamb curry as it goes very well with it.

I reckon unless you have good fresh ripe tomatoes in season you are better of with tinned. Nothing worse than those insipid watery tomatoes grown in hot houses!

"It is abundant in meat protein, tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese, and of course soy sauce. "

Hi Lapis

the biggest concentration of umami is kombu (seaweed) , which the Japanese use in their dashi (stock). Other ingredients like shiitake mushrooms (dried form) also contain a large amount, porcini, parmesan.

Concentrated tomato contain more umami than a fresh tomato since a fresh tomato has a high percentage of water plus there's something about cooking down a tomato too which my poor brain can not remember what makes it better in flavour but also better for healthy reasons. There was a program on the beeb about eating concentrated tomato giving your skin more protection against the sun, they had run tests.

And here's something I've heard recently that when we are born we can detect umami along with sugar (carbohydrates) but not salt for the first six months of our lives.

yes, glutamate was first identified by a Japanese chemist (in 1908, I think) and then developed the production of msg from there. You can sometimes see the glutamate on the kombu seaweed (a type of kelp).

I think the thing you are talking about with tomatoes is Lycopene, a type of carotene.

and that's why I'm not a scientist Lapis but I can not retain names in this holey brain of mine :)

...yes you're right!

Lapis "with tomatoes is Lycopene, a type of carotene" is that why a diet high in tomatoes helps with sunburn ? Working on the notion that carrot oil is used for sunbathing.

I watched a programme where they got a set of identical twins and one of them ate a lot of tomatoes for a few weeks and then they went under a small sun lamp for a set time, the one eating tomatoes didn't burn where the other went quite pink

Steve

carotenes (there are loads of different kinds) are long chains of unsaturated carbon atoms (like omega 3,6,9 fatty acids) which act like electron transports, so they can mop up stray electrons, and therefore photons (from light) which are converted to electrons. That's why they are highly coloured.

Rubbing carotenes on the skin in topical creams might help as a sun block, but eating loads of carotene containing foods is very bad news, because carotenes are toxic. One hears stories of people turning orange (then they die!). I remember Diana Rigg, the actress telling the story of a fellow guest on a chat show in America where a health freak was talking up the advantages of drinking carrot juice, when he keeled over and died!

If the stuff they put in sun block absorbs solar radiation, it most probably contains aromatic (benzene) based compounds, and those chemicals are very toxic, and can migrate across the dermal layers. I avoid using them, and rely on clothing to cover me up. I wonder if anyone has thought about the correlation between people with melanomas and people who use sun block?

ps, the lycopene is only produced in any quantity in cooked tomatoes.

Interesting stuff!

"Rubbing carotenes on the skin in topical creams might help as a sun block"

This explains why some face packs in India contain grated/ground carrots.

Thanks Lapis, it appears there is more to food than meets the eye (or mouth), I would have thought eating loads of carrots would do you nothing but good, it appears that might be rather wrong !

Steve

Too many carrots turning your skin orange has been known for sometime, but is rare, thankfully. There are plenty of nutters out there who overdo things when they get addicted to health kick!

Lapis - just reading the thread since I was last here. Question for you which concerns tomatoes.

You know the tomatoes in the field get ripen by the sun, are certainly the best tomatoes tasting tomatoes...well I don't have that here so...

I ripen my under-ripe English tomatoes during the summer (ones I buy) in a sunny window sill and works really well. Within a week I have very red on the edge of over-ripe tomatoes which are gorgeous to use.

Now the question is: do the tomatoes receive more than just 'heat' through the glass of my window?

The reason is because I have the impression the same tomatoes don't ripen the same if I just have them say by the side of the radiator?

tomatoes ripen in response to three things, moderate heat (21 - 25?C), high humidity (90 - 95% RH) and a gas called ethylene, which is given off by the tomato itself. Putting them on the window sill may heat them, provide a high humidity environment and higher gas concentrations, due to lower than average air movements.

Its a difficult thing to ensure, on the one hand, one needs a 'sheltered' position, on the other, sufficient air to stop mold growth and excessive loss of water. Putting toms in a bag with other (ethylene producing) fruit seems to work for some, although mold growth would be a thing to watch!

Since we're still on the subject of tomatoes, can I substitute tomato puree for tomato paste?

Over here, tomato puree comes in larger cans so I wouldn't know to do with the leftovers whereas I can buy tomato paste in small packs.

Tomato paste is thicker then pureed tomatoes, a bit darker/intense in colour and slightly sweeter. I am not sure why it is sweeter. If you use paste, use less of it. One trick is to dilute it to the puree consistency and then use roughly the same amount, but it will still be slightly sweeter. This howvere, doen't make too much difference.

If you buy pureed tomatoes, they can be used to make a quick tomato soup. It can also be kept in fridge for a week-10 days in a jar. You can also freeze it in smaller jars. I never throw away my empty jars, they come in handy in all sorts of places!

Would it be wrong to use yoghurt and tomatoes together in the same recipe?

I leave my half ripe tomatoes on a tray, on a newspaper, on my kitchen top or on a conservatory top (my conservatory is a wrok room, not a sitting room). They ripen well. Occasional one or two will mould, which has to be removed quickly, to stop otthers getting mouldy too.

In my last post, I mentioned making a quick soup using tomato puree. I meant tomatoe paste!

You have a wrok room Mamta? I had to look that one up.

http://23b.org/gallery/v/23b_members/Arclight/places/Alaska_2004/afc.jpg.html - no wonder you don't want to sit out in it!

Savs, some of Mamta's recipes using tomatoes suggest also adding yoghurt for creaminess. Others have yoghurt in the marinade and tomatoes in making the gravy/sauce, so I don't think there is anything fundamentally 'wrong' in using both.

Ha, ha, ha Winton, a proper 'work room'! Mine, I am afraid, is just like a long kitchen counter, with a double wash basin. It has a couple of clothe drying wire frames/stands and lots of cupboards. It also have my washing machine and tumble dryer. You can put a few chairs and sit in it, but I don't. Work surface is used as a plant nursery in spring. At the moment, it has my chilli plants, full of red chillies, and a couple of aubergine plants.

Forgot to mention; yes I do use yoghurt and tomatoes in the same dish, but use thick yoghurt, not skimmed one and at room temperature. Otherwise, it can split/curdle.

I just wanted to say that this turned out really well.. It was so delicious ! Thank you so much for the recipe. :) I used tomato puree this time, next time I will try yoghurt or maybe add some coconut milk.

I would like to try to use up the rest of my tomato puree for something else. If a recipe says 2-3 tomatoes, how much tomato puree should I use if I want to substitute it?

Thanks again!

next time I will try yoghurt or maybe add some coconut milk.

That is what cooking is all about; experimenting!

I'd reckon on a couple of teaspoons of puree for a medium/largeish tomato Rebecca.

Looking at my current tube I saw it said 'Made in Italy including Vatican City.' Holy tomato pureee? I can't imagine the Pope having room for acres of land under tomato cultivation in the Vatican!

i stoped using tomato in indian food a few weeks ago and replaced it with yoghurt and coconut milk instead. prior to that most of the indian dishes i made had a tomato base and had peppers in. since i have been doing this it made me experiment with a lot more indian dishes than before and it opened our eyes to the fact that indian food is not what most non indian people think it is. i have come to realise that a lot of people have probably never eaten a proper indian meal before. i think when you start on an elimination diet cooking becomes a bit more of a challenge and you begin to realise that you can make anything taste good if you use your imagination. sid.

I am a great believer in tomatoes in curries, though it's easy to get carried away.

I was taught to cook my Mr Murza, an old-style Punjabi who was so strict he used to hit me (hard) with a wooden spoon if I ever made a mistake. He tended to add a small amount of chopped fresh tomatoes to dal and vegetable dishes, but was more of a yoghurt man, on the whole.

The very idea of tomatoes and yoghurt in the same dish would make him slap-happy with his spoon. Although I have the idea they would curdle if used together, I've never had the nerve to try it!

This was 36 years ago. Mr Murza is probably dead ? he was in his 60s then ? but still I can't bring myself to give it a go.

For a quick curry, there's nothing better than a can of chopped tomatoes, though my friend Raza swears by his Italian passata!