Tag Archive for 'unripe'

Cheesy fried green tomatoes

Published
by
marc
on June 10, 2008
in Breakfast, Brunch, Vegetable and Vegetarian
. 23 Comments

I picked these green tomatoes up at the farmer’s market this weekend with every intention of turning them into a nice light tomato mint sorbet. Instead, I woke up Sunday morning with a hankerin’ fer some fried green ta’maters.

I guess I should have known this was going to happen when I bought them, and bought some extras. Hopefully they’ll still have some more this week so I can make my sorbet. Roasted green tomatoes also make fantastic salsa, and I love green tomato chutney’s and jams.

Given the big fuss over raw tomatoes, I guess it’s only appropriate that I deep fried the little bastards. Though in all fairness to these Lycopene rich fruits, I’m guessing the salmonella outbreaks are a result of bad farming and people/restaurants not properly washing the tomatoes.

Because they’re not fully ripe, green tomatoes are tart, dense and perfect for frying as they have less moisture and hold their shape. This recipe will yield fragrant disks with thick savory crusts and a tart, tender interior. They’re fantastic with a soft poached egg on top, and if you want to go for the full heart attack, make a cream and sausage gravy to pour on top (I call this Southern Eggs Benedict).
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Green peach salad with feta

Published
by
marc
on May 24, 2008
in Fruit, Fusion, Salad, Spring, Vegetable and Vegetarian
. 9 Comments

When life gives you green peaches, make a salad!

I’m sure we’ve all jumped the gun on peach season seeing those perfectly fuzzy fragrant bulbs sitting in our grocers produce section just screaming out to be bought. It’s still a bit early in the season for peaches, so if you gave into the calling, you more than likely to end up with crunchy fructose deficient duds. But don’t despair! Green peaches are actually delicious if you know what to do with them.

“What the hell would you do with a green peach, I mean that’s like wilted lettuce isn’t it?”

Technically if you’re hoping for them to ripen in your fruit bowl, you’ll be waiting a long time, since the sugar content of stone fruit does not increase once they are picked. What’s more likely to happen is that they’ll go from hard and dry to soft and mealy.

“So what do you do with them? Load them into a potato canon and shoot them at your neighbor’s dog?”

Well, you could do that, but that’s mean, and a good way to get your ass kicked, not to mention the fact that you’d be wasting a perfectly good peach. What you really have to do is shift your thinking a bit and treat it like a vegetable.

“WTF!?”

Think of it as a fragrant veggie that’s somewhere between crisp and crunchy and refreshingly tart with a mellow aroma. They’re especially good added to salads and make excellent pickles.

“Dude, you’re a genius”

While I’d like to take credit for figuring this one out, I actually got the idea at some restaurant out in Cowra/Canowindra (NSW Australia) or thereabouts. The salad and dressing on the other-hand is a product of some daydreaming (after my anger with Fresh Direct subsided for charging me $4 for apricot sized green peaches).

I know the flavors are from all over the place, but it works. I like the way the intensely earthy sesame oil harmonizes with the barnyard notes of the goat cheese and the floral peachiness coming from the unripe stone fruit. Likewise, the creamy feta offsets the tartness of the green peaches nicely.

So what unconventional ways to rescue an ingredient have you found?
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