Dot’s Green Tomato Pickles

It was the last weeks of February 2023 when I noticed the tinge of autumnal colours whispering the end of summer. The late ripening and first harvesting of red tomatoes after Valentine’s Day confirmed just how lukewarm the summer had been. It wasn’t unexpected, warnings of the La Niña rains was exactly as forecast, my backyard lawn remained lusciously green with only a small patch of sunburnt grass next to an apple tree showed that summer had visited but left just as quickly as it arrived.

I was eagerly awaiting summer this year: I planted two Jeune Flammes, two Pineapple Pigs, two Grosse Lisse, three Black Cherries, one Roma, one Gardeners’ Delight, one Honeybee, and one Broad Ripple Yellow Currant. Thirteen tomato plants altogether.  The summer rains provided the perfect environment for dragonflies, butterflies, mosquitos, white cabbage moths and mice, the latter two thriving exceptionally well in my garden. When I started to see green caterpillars feasting on my tomatoes from the inside out, and tomato rinds nibbled to the seeds, I netted the whole bed to a fortress like quality and watched the green tomatoes proliferate on the vine, showing the great promise I had awaited from last summer. There were enough warm days to feel like summer, but not enough to entice the tomatoes with even the slightest blush of red.  I watched and waited and noticed suspiciously as whole tomatoes disappeared, one by one each day, until there were none on the vine.

I never saw any mice or rats in the garden, the netted fortress remained undisturbed ruling out the resident possums, but to borrow the words of my great grandfather, these ‘privateers rapidly stole in to plunder’ under the cover of darkness, robbing me of the chance to make my grandmother Dot’s tomato relish from the tomatoes I grew.

Relishing tomatoes long after the summer

Homegrown green tomatoes in woven basket by artist Joslyn Maralngurra (Ngalngbali clan of Kunwinjku language)

When I was a young kid, my father and my grandfather Jack would go to the VFL football when Hawthorn was playing at Waverly or the MCG. My mum would work on Saturdays, so my sibling and I would spend Saturdays in winter with my grandmother, Dot. Grudgingly we would get in the car with toys or books and stay at Yonga Road, Balwyn all day until my father and grandfather returned from the game. Despite those juvenile complaints of boredom, as an adult living a lifetime away from the simplicity of those wintery days, I cherish these memories, and one of them being fresh, white bread sandwiches with a slice or two of Strasburg sausage meat and Dot’s tomato relish.

Often, as we sat down to eat our sandwiches at a small round table wedged between the kitchen bench and a window overlooking the backyard, Dot would have a handwritten recipe book open on the kitchen bench whilst she prepared the ingredients for a cinnamon teacake that would come out of the oven to be eaten warm with lashings of butter for afternoon tea.

The Recipe Book

Dot’s recipe book

The family packed up Dot and Jack’s place at Yonga Road long after Dot had died in 1995 when Jack, aged 98, chose to go to a nursing home after a short hospital stay.  I asked my Aunty Moon if I could have one of Dot’s recipe books. She replied, “of course, help yourself”.

I chose the book that had graced the kitchen bench on those Saturday afternoons. A brown, cloth bound index book, with its cover and spine hanging by threads, and it’s bulging contents held together by a rubber band.

Inside the cover of the book are many scraps of paper. Torn out magazine recipes, carefully trimmed newspaper clippings, tin labels and plastic wrappers, covert advertising booklets with titles such as ‘Clean fresh natural gas conversion recipes’ from the Colonial Gas Association, or ‘Celestial Chinese Recipes with Continental Soup’, and folded squares containing handwritten or typed recipes from Dot’s sister Elsie, my mum, and friends with names like Shirley, Nita, Hazel or Stella.

No scrap of paper was wasted, Dot used an envelope with Jack’s annotation ‘G’PARENT LETTER’ crossed out for Feijoa jam, and Elsie used the corner of Noel Jones & Associates offering a confidential service for an appraisal to note down ‘Apple bread and butter’. Most importantly, complementing the yellowed newspaper clippings are brown cooking splatters, water smudged handwriting, and for a long time there was dried caked flour on the front cover, which has now mostly flaked off.

To me, this fragile talismanic recipe book holds secrets to the past. I keep it wrapped up in a cotton bag, stored in a box, and as a good archivist honouring the past, I am careful not to mix up the newspaper clippings, retaining the order from Dot’s time.  I handle the book carefully with a reverence one might have for a religious relic.

Recipe secrets

Dot’s recipe book showing newspaper clippings and scrap notes

I recognise Dot’s handwriting and notice her sister Elsie has also written in some recipes. There is another author in amongst the pages, an unfamiliar hand. The recipes seem to be carefully written, the cursive script is full, rounded, and generously spaced, as though the author is young, not yet adept to writing quickly.

I asked my Aunty Moon and we theorised perhaps it is Dot’s sister-in-law, Ellie Donovan, who, with her husband, Roy and their four children, lived in the same house with Dot and Jack (and their four children) at Elphin Grove during the Second World War years circa 1942 to 1952. Moon thought perhaps it was another sister-in-law, Vi (Violet) or a friend Nita.  I looked through the family archives to see if I could match the handwriting, but unlike a good archivist, I am yet to properly label or catalogue the collection, so it is not easy to find a letter or a captioned photograph to compare the handwriting. I contacted Ellie’s daughter, and she sent me a copy of one of Ellie’s handwritten recipes. Ellie is not the mystery author.

Dot’s recipe book with an unidentified author’s recipe for Peppermint Hedgehogs

I want to believe that the recipes written in ink are a timestamp, the era before ballpoint pens superseded fountain pens. Perhaps this was Dot’s handwriting when she was a child. But this supposedly young author added recipes for Peppermint Hedgehog halfway down a page following on from a recipe that is written in ballpoint in Dot’s hand.

If I choose to believe that the earliest recipes are written in ink, then the first recipes written were: Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Rice Bubbles, Toffee, Tomato Paste, Tomato Relish and Green Tomato Pickles.

Green Tomato Pickles

Dot’s Green Tomato Pickles

April provided a taste of the summer we didn’t have, day after day of warm sunny weather prompted the first and last burst of black cherries and Roma tomatoes. On the eve of a quiet weekend, a history colleague posted photos of her Nonna’s handwritten green tomato pickle recipes on Instagram. I compared Dot’s recipe and noted the similarities (turmeric, cayenne pepper, curry powder) and differences (honey in lieu of sugar, and cloves). The imperial measurements speak of the same era, and spurred on by my colleague’s kitchen endeavours, I get busy in the kitchen too, evoking Dot’s efforts and matching them with my own.

In the 1970s, Australia commenced metrication with the food industry converting to metric measurements in 1974[1]. The following year, Dot annotated the Green Tomato Pickles recipe with a note, NB: about 4 tablespoons cornflour 1 bottle of vinegar (to 6lbs) & extra vinegar to mix spices. The recipe called for 12 pounds of green tomatoes, some five and half kilograms. I managed to harvest just over two kilos of green tomatoes (four pounds in the old language) and a good day’s work spread over two days, yielded 10 jars of green tomato pickles.

I thought a lot about Dot as I made her green tomato pickles, and I wondered if tomato relish symbolised long hot summers and green tomato pickles were for the summer years tainted by the likes of La Niña? The annotation in 1975 corelates to a La Niña event, Victoria experienced its wettest month on record in October 1975 and La Nina occurred from 1973 to 1976.[2]

As I bottled the fruits of my efforts, a tasting suggested I may have overdone it with the cayenne pepper or the onion as it was sharp on both the sweet and savory notes, but to my relief, I have found the strong flavour balances out rather nicely in a toasted cheese sandwich. It may be more peppery than Dot’s version, but it feels like I’ve preserved those childhood days with Gran in every jar of green tomato pickle.

[1] Metrication

[2] Bureau of Meteorology, Australian rainfall during El Niño and La Niña events