Mulye family's Opa's Brandywine tomatoes a source of inspiration

If there's one plant to bring joy to the home gardeners of Canberra it is the tomato and no grower has expressed more enthusiasm about her crop this season than Seema Mulye of Weston. She has been growing the Opa's Brandywine variety that Adrian van Leest of Campbell shared with work colleagues and readers of this column during spring 2013 and 2014.

In the last week of February Seema had five tomatoes that weighed more than 500 grams and, in one day, she and her husband Yogesh Mulye picked more than eight kilos of ripe tomatoes.

Seema Mulye grew up in Mumbai in India with next to no gardening skills or time, however she and her husband pursued gardening as a favourite activity as soon as they landed in Canberra in 2000. Their first attempts were very promising and they have shared vegie garden photos with their family and friends in India.

In June 2014 they moved from Pearce to a new home that they designed in Weston. The couple included a vegie patch area in the design for their backyard and their builder provided the patch ready with soil. They randomly tested the soil and found it was full of healthy earthworms so they were able to start planting in spring.

Current crops being harvested include beans, capsicums, chillies, corn, beetroot and eggplants but the crop to bring her most joy is the Opa's Brandywine tomatoes. Not only do they taste delicious but her photos of the harvest went viral on social media and her comments that the variety is generous and forgiving of any mistakes have motivated a number of people to seek out the variety next summer.

Seema is the main cook in her house and she received a tomato ketchup recipe from her aunt, Sushma Achrekar in Mumbai, to use with the crop. She has improvised with some of the ingredients and she used the entire 2.5 kg of tomatoes to make a 750 ml jar of the ketchup and several smaller bottles for friends. The recipe follows, below.

HERITAGE TOMATO SEED

Food & Wine was also alerted to the tomatoes grown by Barbara Payne of O'Connor. She is a member of Canberra Organic Growers' Society and was among those who received seed from Jim Cleaver who had found them in an envelope labelled "Bullheart Tomato 1944" (Kitchen Garden February 25).

Payne grew the tomatoes in her home garden rather than her O'Connor COGS plot to avoid cross-pollination. As she says of the crop from 70-year-old seeds, "Any wonder that tomato seeds survive cooking and then propagate in the compost! The flavour is excellent."

UNIDENTIFIED ROGUE TOMATO

Sally Bachelard of Cook has a tomato bush in her garden that was self-sown from her enclosed Aerobin compost bin. There are 30 juicy tomatoes per hand and the bush is more than two metres high. She wonders if the seed has come from "Perino" tomatoes bought from Coles or heritage tomatoes purchased at the farmers' market.

OPEN GARDEN WITH MORE THAN TOMATOES

Horticulturist Jackie Warburton (Kitchen Garden May 2013) has given me a homegrown tomato bonanza of tastes with her varieties, Gallipoli, Jaune Flamee, Black Krim, and self-seeders from her clients' gardens.

On May 2-3 from 10am to 4.30pm Jackie and Bret will welcome visitors to their productive cottage garden for Open Gardens Australia, 14 Raphael Close, Oxley. Entry $8. There will be plants for sale.

INDIAN TOMATO KETCHUP

2.5kg tomatoes
200g sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar (any vinegar will do)
1-2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp salt

Pouch ingredients:

Muslin cloth
1 onion, quartered
6 cloves
3cm cinnamon stick
6 black peppercorns

Cut the tomatoes into halves or quarters and boil them in their own juices (do not add water) on a low flame – the tomatoes will start oozing out their own juices. Boil the tomatoes until super soft. Grind the tomato mixture into a puree and strain it into a heavy bottomed pan, discarding any seeds and skin. Boil the strained puree and add the vinegar and sugar until dissolved and the mixture turns shiny and glossy. Add the salt and red chilli powder to the boiling puree

Gently tie the ends of a muslin cloth in the form of a pouch, add all the pouch ingredients and place the pouch in the mixture until it is reduced to a desired consistency. The sauce will absorb the flavours of the pouch. Discard the muslin cloth contents, squeezing out any liquid within it, once the sauce is ready. Pour the tomato ketchup into sterilised bottles. They freeze well.