What do people do with Costoluto Genovese?

[HastingsMN]

I am donating tomato seedlings to my neighbor's church plant sale, and I need some "stories" to help sell the varieties. The ones I really like are no problem, I can sing their praises. Even recipe suggestions. But I grew a few plants from packets that I tried once and said, That was OK I guess been there done that. So I'm not sure what so say about some of those. I wondered if I should have moral qualms about selling varieties I don't like, but then I thought, everyone likes different things.


Costoluto Genovese: It's kind of cool looking I guess? It's Italian, is it a paste tomato? A lot of the later ones didn't ripen evenly, some lobes stayed green while others ripened. I don't remember it tasting that great, maybe it's my climate because a lot of the Italian paste tomatoes don't turn out well for me either, not as well as Amish Paste and Federle and Edelrot (all of which I am selling also). It's flat so it would be handy for stuffed tomatoes I suppose.

Tomande F1. It's a tomato? It's red? Voila, it's French! Kinda meh. Again it might have been a climate thing.

Also I'm doing a SSE seed trial and I have some extra cherry tomatoes from that, so does anyone know what Grams Cherry looks like? When I look it up all I get are how much cherry tomatoes weigh in metric.

[Labradors2]

Costoluto Genovese is a fabulous-tasting tomato for paste-making. If you do a search here on Tomatoville, you will learn all about Brokenbar, her love for the variety and her recipe.

I grew them once. They were very prone to BER, but they grew out of it and produced like crazy. I never had a problem with uneven ripening. and I was happy with the sauce that I made. However, since I'm not wild about using my Vitorio for removing seeds and skins, mainly because I don't appreciate having to spring-clean the kitchen afterwards, I haven't grown CG since because skinning them can be tricky.

Linda

[FarmerShawn]

I grow Brokenbar's Costoluto Genovese every year. I have found it generally very productive. I think it's too juicy to be considered a paste tomato, but it is darn tasty when fully ripe. It's one of the best for fresh salsa like Pico de Gallo. I've never tried to make a sauce from it alone. We always put a mix of varieties in our sauces.

[KarenO]

I’m Not a fan of the flat shape, core and deep fluting. Makes them impossible to peel. I think there are a great many better tomatoes personally.
KarenO

[Fusion_power]

I love to make sauce with them. They are so intensely flavored that I have to add some sweeter tomatoes to balance the flavor. My usual is a few large slicers like Crnkovic Yugoslavian at a 1 to 5 ratio with Costoluto Genovese. It is a phenomenally productive tomato in the southeast. Yes, I grow Brokenbar's seed.

[HastingsMN]

Thank you, Linda, I searched for Brokenbar and found several helpful threads, and learned that paste tomatoes can make excellent sauce even if they are not tasty fresh. This makes sense because the other member of the household does not like tomatoes much, and likes tomato sauce even less, so it is unlikely that I tried to make sauce with it. I am also not terribly good at tomato sauce making, as it is not at all in my family tradition (we are pasty Northern Europeans going back to the dinosaurs). But I suppose I could try again.

I am glad to hear everyone's testimony about BER because I recal now that I had a problem with that too.

I happened to find the Baker Creek reviews on Costoluto Genovese and it is entertaining how split the reviews are. Some adore it and others had no luck at all. Some are pretty funny:

"This was the most persnickety tomato variety I have ever grown! ... To make my life more miserable it was the ONLY tomato plant in my garden that had insect problems. It seemed like every aphid, beetle, and hornworm in the county came to visit this plant despite having multiple options literally four feet in all directions. The insects apparently like how this variety "tastes" better than others. I had to spray it frequently with neem oil to keep the insects at bay, as I'd often discover this plant, and only this plant, COVERD in aphids. When the fruit finally arrived, it was significantly smaller than the pictures would make you believe, however the yield was good. My family LOVED the flavor though, these are amazing on pizza and made all the blood, sweat, and tears this plant put me through worth it. Maybe if I grew it for a few more seasons I'd get to learn its "personality" better, but I don't have the time to fuss over it in the future. I would recommend growing this plant as a means of drawing insects away from the plants you actually want to do well and hopefully you'll get one good pizza's worth and several untouched-by-pests other tomato plants."

[Labradors2]

HastingsMN, glad you found the Brokenbar threads.

That quote from Baker Creek was hilarious! Thanks for sharing. BTW you need to grow the Brokenbar strain .

Linda

[HastingsMN]

So this is a dumb question, but as I said I come from a long line of northerners suspicious of tomatoes. What general method do you use to produce the sauce, as in, how do you remove the skins and seeds, or don't you? I have tried recipes that have you use the hot-water method to take the skins off, and also take out the seeds. Then there are also lines of thought that say these add flavor so roast them or cook them all together and then mill the sauce to get the skins out. (I have the simple hand crank mill with the plates from the fleet and farm store.)

Then there are also the recipes that say cook it forever on the stove, and others that say only briefly to keep the "fresh" taste. It is all very confusing.

[MrsJustice]

Costoluto Genovese is such a pretty Tomato.
I must have, Amen!!

It's Just Beautiful, Amen!!

[Whwoz]

There are two main methods that people tend to use to remove skin, as indicated above, some like the hot water trick where you put a cross in the bottom then dip in boiling water for a few seconds which loosens the skin or you can use a food mill. Food mills vary in style, with some better suited to raw fruit and others cooked fruit. My mother used a Mouli which is great for cooked fruit while I use a Victorio on the fruit raw. Both options come with different screen sizes os one can leave seeds in or remove as you wish by selecting appropriate screen. One can also remove seeds by cutting and scraping the out.

How long to cook comes back to personal preference and varieties chosen for the sauce. The juicer the varieties, the longer the cook time to get to preferred thickness. Too long a cook can start to lead to caramelizaton and associated flavours coming into play.

Costuloto genovese appears to be one plant that has more restrictive climate preferences than most to perform at its best. Does well here for me in a dry summer environment with those that grow it in a cooler wetter environment finding it doesn't do as well, hence those Baler Creek comments above. It is primarily a sauce tomato, not paste hence not as dry as some others, say Russo Sicilian Togetta which has been selected as a paste by the Italians over generations

[Labradors2]

Here' how I make sauce. Because I grow lot of tomatoes, I put them into freezer bags and freeze them as they ripen. When the weather has cooled a little, I take them out and run the frozen tommies under the hot tap to easily pop off the skins, then I put them in colanders in coolers. It takes a couple of days for them to thaw, and I get a lot of water out of them which saves on cooking time! I cook them for a while before canning them.

Linda

[MrsJustice]

I just freeze them and strew them in pot roast or bake them inside my winter Quashes to just keep their beautiful shape in all my dishes in the winter.

[loulac]

Costoluto Genovese tomatoes are supposed to be used for paste but they are quite tasty in salads, are late producers and show a fair resistance to late blight in my place. A must in my garden every year.