TOMAYTO, TOMAHTO, IT MAY BE WINTER, BUT DON’T CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF!
Big, ripe, red, juicy tomatoes, the glory of summer, disappear with the arrival of cold weather, and in their stead your grocery offers limpid pink, hard, flavorless replacements. This is the moment to temporarily suspend your firmly held belief that fresh vegetables are superior to anything that comes in a can; for much of the year, good quality canned tomatoes are better than fresh. Unless your recipe instructs you otherwise, drain off the canning liquid, which may taste more like metal than tomato, and squeeze each tomato to remove the seeds. To substitute canned tomatoes for fresh, use ½ cup canned (after draining and seeding) for each medium sized fresh tomato.
