Tomato Week: Know your Hanovers

Summer of love: The tomatoes from Hanover County, Va., inspire fan devotion. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post) I have to admit that during August and September, I develop a hoarder’s mentality at the farmers market: I want to collect as many of the gorgeous/ugly/deformed/monstrous tomatoes as possible before fall kicks in and I’m left with nothing but mealy little orbs from Mexico.

Which is why I’m dizzy with excitement about the Food section’s annual Top Tomato Recipe Contest, which attracted more than 110 entries this year. We’ll be publishing the 12 best recipes (plus a few others, including one from Food editor Joe “Cooking for One” Yonan) and one from Stephanie “Nourish” Sedgwick, all of which can help you use up those hoarded tomatoes in your house. And if that’s not enough, Edward Schneider will add another recipe to the mix on Friday, when we publish his Cooking Off the Cuff column right here at All We Can Eat.

Yours truly, the Comic Book Guy of Tomatoes, takes a nerdy look at Hanover tomatoes, the celebrated fruit of central Virginia. To whet your appetite for that story, I would like to test your knowledge of Hanovers. Take a look at the tomatoes after the jump — all for sale at the Pole Green Produce market in Mechanicsville, all labeled Hanovers — and tell me which ones are truly specimens deserving the name. (The answer is at the end of this post.)

These plump hybrids are classic slicing tomatoes. But are they Hanovers? (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)
Basket case: Are these colorful pinks and Romas Hanovers, too? (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)
Cherry bombs: These little fruit poppers have adopted the Hanover label. Do they deserve it? (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)
Marking their spot: The varying shades of green, yellow and red on these colorful tomatoes remind you of Jonagold apples. Could they be Hanovers? (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)
Green revolution: Firm and acidic, green tomatoes are perfect for breading and frying. But are they perfect Hanover tomatoes? (Tim Carman/The Washington Post) So which one is the genuine Hanover? All of them. Find out why in Wednesday’s Food section.