My Granny’s house always smelled of food. Partly it was the old gas oven she used, a massive thing with cast-iron burner covers and pilot lights that filled the kitchen with dry, warm air. I remember bacon grease in a small jar on the back of the stove, and this amazing food smell, not of any dish, but just of food. There, the kitchen seemed a place of sustinence, and whatever your stomach desired could be had, as long as the desire was steak or catfish, some vegetables and a starch (or two starches, if the vegetable was corn). Still, when my family travelled there, mom and dad coaxing our beater Volvo nearly 1,200 miles, and we entered the old farmhouse through the kitchen door, there was always a light on for us, and that kitchen’s warm aroma.

Granny also had a massive vegetable garden for a number of years, probably the first organic gardener my sister and I knew. She grew cucumbers and tomatoes, mostly, and I wish I had an appreciation for tomatoes back then because all who tasted them raved at their deep flavor and amazing mouth feel. I went with her once to a farmer’s market in Lawrence, Kansas. Muscle, mostly. I piled baskets into her trunk and helped her unload them on a table in someone else’s booth. A friend who’d offered to buy the lot then sell them piecemeal. I was fifteen and surly, didn’t care for vegetables and thought the idea of a salted tomato slice on a plate was anathema to all things good and tasty.

How little I knew.

When compared to tomatoes we get in the local supermarkets most of the year, a fresh, ripe tomato is a wonderful thing. Tart and slightly sweet with none of the mealy mouth feel so often off-putting to kids and adults alike. It’s because the off-season tomatoes aren’t bred for flavor or texture. They’re genetically engineered for shipping, with sturdy interiors and thick skin bitter with tannins.

A good canned tomato is better than a bad fresh one.

In her cellar, Granny kept jar after jar of canned and pickled vegetables. Her cucumbers became light, crisp dills, and her tomatoes were preserved for soups and stews. Again, I wish I’d been able to appreciate them.

Farfalle with spinach tomato sauce and goat cheese

Ingredients (serves 4)
8 – 10 ounces dry farfalle

Sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
29 ounces canned tomatoes, diced, no salt added
1/2 cup white wine
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (optional)
Fresh spinach leaves (approx. 20)
Kosher salt
Oregano (dried, in winter)

Fresh goat cheese

Technique
mince
chiffonade

Method
Caramelize
Boil
Simmer

Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until it just begins to brown, then add the tomatoes and white wine, stir. Increase the heat to medium-high, and when the sauce begins to bubble, reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to simmer.

Fill a stock pot with about four quarts of water. Add two tablespoons of kosher salt and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and set a timer according to the instructions on the package.

Now turn your attention back to the sauce. Add a teaspoon of kosher salt, stir, and taste. It should taste well seasoned, with a certain depth and brightness of flavor, but not salty. Sprinkle a dash of the oregano in the sauce, add the balsamic vinegar if you feel like it, and stir the ingredients together.

Finally, it’s time to chiffonade the spinach leaves and add them to the sauce. Work in batches of five. Stack them on top of one another, roll them up, then slice gently and cleanly through the leaves. Each cut should be about a quarter inch apart.

When the pasta finishes cooking, plate, top with a generous portion of the sauce, and then add a few pieces of the goat cheese. The tart goat cheese provides a wonderful counterpoint to the sweet oregano and spinach and lends the sauce a certain creaminess.

There’s no shame in canned tomatoes. My Granny knew that, and her canned tomatoes made a better choice for her stews than anything that might have come from the store in the dead of winter.

I probably still can’t make a good vegetable stew, fresh tomatoes or no. But an excellent sauce doesn’t have to come from fresh tomatoes. High-quality canned tomatoes produce marvelous flavor and are a much better bet when the fresh tomatoes in the store have been flown in from Chile.

Can people enjoy the simple pleasure of a salted tomato slice on a plate during the off season? No. But during a Kansas winter, would they want to? No, they’d want to stand in a warm, dry kitchen the size of a walk-in closet, faint blue glow from the stove’s pilot lights, the scent of tomato stew in the air. And the kettle on, for hot chocolate. With marshmallows.