ODE TO BULGARIAN TOMATO

Juicy, aromatic and bursting with the tender sweetness that comes only after ripening under the strong Balkan sun: the tomatoes that you can find on a Bulgarian plate taste like nothing else. From salad and stews to the emblematic lyutenitsa paste, they are a staple of local cuisine and a source of pride for their supposedly unique deliciousness. The fake news that the EU was planning to ban local tomatoes enraged hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians in the 2010s and 2020s. That outrage was comparable only to other fake news that the EU would ban other pillars of national identity: homemade rakiya, tripe soup, rose oil and Christmas time pig slaughtering.

In fact, Bulgarians' infatuation with their tomatoes is a recent phenomenon. This vegetable (or fruit, if you follow this line of thought) has been grown and eaten in the Bulgarian lands for about 150 years. Most likely, the first Bulgarians to eat tomatoes were the ones who lived and worked in Constantinople, the heart of the Ottoman Empire. The first documented use of tomatoes in an Ottoman cookbook is from 1844.

The tomatoes that fed the Ottoman capital markets were grown in vast gardens that surrounded the city; many of the gardeners were Bulgarians. There, they learned how to tend plants and cultivate new varieties. The first person who decided to bring tomatoes on Bulgarian soil was one Aleksandar Dimitrov, a man from Kurtovo Konare, a village north of Plovdiv. According to legend, he brought the tomato seeds hidden in his walking stick. In a couple of decades, the people of Kurtovo Konare were producing large quantities of tomatoes and had even built greenhouses. They also experimented and created several hybrids and varieties fine tuned to thrive on the local soil and climate. Today, the Kurtovo Konare pink tomato is considered a living legend, the epitome of traditional Bulgarian tomatoes.

With Communism, a new chapter in the life of Bulgarian tomatoes began. The new regime was all about industrial agriculture organised via a network of collective farms that worked both for the local market and for export. As a member of the Comecon organisation, which brought planned economy and bartering on an international level, Bulgaria supplied the East bloc, and most importantly the USSR, with fresh and preserved vegetables and fruits. The state invested heavily in developing its tomato production. Irrigation systems were built for the water-thirsty plant, and large plots were designated for its produce. In the 1960s and the 1970s, Bulgaria became the ultimate European leader in tomato production and export. Each year, between 500,000 and 600,000 tonnes of quality tomatoes would be exported to the East bloc and the USSR.

A special institute was created to develop new vegetable varieties. Tomatoes were high on its agenda. The scientists there created 15 new tomato varieties and many hybrids. Some were perfect for making pulp or preservation, others were delicious to eat in salads. This was when the other iconic Bulgarian tomato variety appeared, the red and juicy Ideal.

However, under Communism tomato abundance in Bulgarian cooperative farms did not mean tomato abundance on Bulgarian tables. As a significant part of the production was exported, city residents would often find themselves queuing in long lines to buy a kilo or two of subpar tomatoes almost squashed to a pulp due to inadequate transportation and storage. The people who enjoyed delicious tomatoes were the ones whose parents and grandparents still lived in villages and grew vegetables in their private gardens and plots. Both groups would eat tomatoes only in season.

Bulgarian large scale tomato production collapsed with the demise of Communism. In the 1990s, the cooperative farms were closed and the land was returned to its former owners, or their heirs. Few people were willing or capable to take on labour extensive and unpredictable businesses such as growing tomatoes for sale. The irrigation system was left without maintenance and soon started to deteriorate.

The depopulation of the villages also meant a lack of people to pick the harvest. The local tomato varieties were delicious, but they had a major disadvantage in the rapidly modernising Bulgarian market: they had short shelf life. This did not suit the foreign stores that were arriving in Bulgaria and were rapidly taking a large share of the market – they needed tomatoes with good looks and a long shelf life. To them, taste was not that important. Soon, varieties created to meet these criteria were making their way on store shelves and Bulgarian tables.

Today, Bulgaria tomato productions is about a ninth of what it was at peak times in the 1970s. The gap left by lack of Bulgarian production was filled with imports from the country's neighbours – Turkey, Greece, and North Macedonia. The change coincided with Bulgaria's accession to the EU and its regulated production and markets. For many, it was easy to interpret the disappearance of Bulgarian tomatoes, and other traditional foods and industries, as a "plot" against everything Bulgarian.

The change of the markets in the 2000s-2020s affected the tomatoes that Bulgarians eat on a regular basis. On the one hand, greenhouse production made eating fresh tomatoes a reality year round. On the other hand, even local producers started growing foreign varieties that look good and can last for weeks in storage, but taste like... tissue paper.

Bulgarians who still grow their own tomatoes were also affected. Many of them switched to varieties that yield more than the old tomatoes and are more resistant to the longer draughts and the new diseases which became a part of life with climate change.

Here and there, old varieties are still preserved, and you can taste them if you are lucky enough. There are also Bulgarian companies that have developed new varieties, which are both big (a quality that tomato connoisseurs in Bulgaria value highly), delicious, juicy and last longer, such as Rosamax, Rozov Dar, or Pink Gift, and Pink Ideal.

If the Bulgarian tomato is in such a deep crisis, why do you feel that you eat this divine vegetable (or fruit) almost every time you sit at a Bulgarian table? The answer is that a lot of the excellent tomatoes that you can have in Bulgaria are not Bulgarian. They might have been imported from Greece or Turkey. Or they might be grown from seeds belonging to foreign varieties, such as the Japanese Fuji Pink or the Turkish Pink Rock.