We’re a little behind in the season this year in Massachusetts.  The cold and rain has kept corn back by a couple of weeks and slicing tomatoes even more.  But, for the past few weeks at the Copley Square Market I’ve been seeing gorgeous gem colored cherry tomatoes.  While not as drippingly fulfilling as the full-sized variety, these little beauties have been a satisfying segway between the subtle leafy greens of our prolonged spring and the showy juicy vegetables we associate with summer.

It’s fair to say that I’m in love with cherry tomatoes at the moment.  I fell for them last summer while working at Coon Rock Farm and I’ve fallen for them again now.  Spinach salads with goat cheese and pecans are good and fine, lettuce salads with strawberries and spring onions have their place, but to me a real salad must always have tomatoes in it.  This past week I’ve been reveling in mixed green salads with radishes, spring onions, and tiny uncut cherry tomatoes.  Next week I forsee raw salads of pine nuts, broccoli florets, golden zucchini, and assorted cherry tomatoes.

One of the best things about cherry tomatoes is their variety.  I’m sure I raved about this last year, but I’m struck by it again this summer.  I’ve enjoyed dusty rose-colored cherry tomatoes with their tangy-sweet balance of flavors.  I’ve had sweet yellow pear tomatoes (my own continue to grow at a depressingly slow rate, but apparently other farmers are better at dealing with the elements than I), sour red cherry tomatoes the size of my thumb nail, and purply-green cherry tomatoes that would put an amethyst to shame with their beauty and are ever so much more useful than a gemstone.  I’ve popped hundreds of tiny Mexico Midgets into my salad bowl, eaten red and gold mottled Isis Candy as my mid-morning snack, and made lovely purple-red pasta sauce from Black Cherries.

Making pasta sauce from cherry tomatoes is the easiest thing in the world as there is no peeling or deseeding to worry about.

Basic Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce:

1. 1 tablespoon butter
2. 1 tablespoon olive oil
3. 2 cloves garlic
4. 2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and halved
5.  2 tablespoons fresh basil or oregano, sliced
6. 1/4 cup white wine
7. Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:

• Heat the butter and oil to medium-high in a saucepan.
• When the butter has melted and begins to bubble add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.  Stir constantly so that the garlic does not burn.
• Add the halved tomatoes and cook for about 4-5 minutes, until they become slightly soft and the juices begin to run.
• Add the basil or oregano and cook for another minute.
• Add the wine, salt, and pepper.  Cook until the sauce has reached the desired consistency and then remove from the heat and serve over pasta immediately.  This amount of sauce will go with 1/2-3/4 pounds of pasta.