Brief backstory: in May or June, I planted some Cherokee Purple tomato seeds. They actually grew into plants, but by late summer, they had only produced a couple of sad, split little tomatoes (that turned out to be delicious anyway):
Here's a blurry picture of the ONE tomato that ripened in the garage after our early first freeze in November. It didn't taste very good:
And as of today, I still had all these green tomatoes left, with no sign of ripening:
So when I saw that this recipe called for "ripe or green" tomatoes, I decided to cook them, even though I had never eaten green tomatoes before.
I could type out the recipe, but it's very basic. I did a half recipe, which was enough for my own lunch, plus a little extra for my roommate to try.
Just mix two eggs and a splash of milk. Add salt and pepper. Pour into a shallow bowl or a plate with high edges (I did the mixing on the plate, which takes an experienced hand, a hand that is too lazy to wash a bowl and a plate.) Heat a skillet over medium low heat and melt half a tablespoon of butter. Soak a slice of bread in the egg mixture until it is just saturated, and place it in the skillet. (The illustration in the book showed a slice of thick, "artisanal" white bread, which is probably why they recommended soaking it in the egg mixture for five minutes! If you soak regular bread that long, it will dissolve. I used some "12-Grain" bagged bread, the closet thing to white bread I could stand to buy.)
While the French toast is cooking, melt a tablespoon of butter in another skillet and halve or quarter the tomatoes, red and/or green. Sautee the tomatoes for however long you like (the book said two minutes... I cooked the green ones on low heat the entire time I was cooking French toast, then threw in the red ones (Campari, $1 million per pound) at the last minute).
Once you've cooked two or three slices of French toast, top with the sauteed tomatoes. This was the best I could do at plating (another thing I hope to get better at this year):
Notice (or don't) the grease smears where I tried to wipe up excess butter. Overall, I ended up using about 2 1/2 TBSP of butter (the original recipe called for 4 eggs, 4 slices of bread, 1/4 C. milk, 8 tomatoes, and 4 TBSP of butter, so I wasn't too far off).
My reaction to the dish was, first, that it was good; second, that green tomatoes taste like canned tomatoes, but have a crunchy texture, almost like an apple, but smoother; and third, that I had spent a lot of time and effort making a fancy version of what my family calls a "fried egg sandwich", which is a piece of toast with a buttery fried egg on top, and, depending on how poor you are at the time, either ketchup, raw tomatoes, or both on top on the egg. My roommate asked if there was cheese in this, and we concluded that it only tasted cheesy because of the excess of butter (I used cultured butter, which has a stronger flavor).
Overall, this dish was a good idea, though a bit time consuming for what you end up with. In the future, I might cook all the French toast first, then cook the tomatoes in the same skillet afterwards in order to use fewer dishes. I like the idea of a savory salt-and-pepper French toast. I also like the idea of cooking the tomatoes in butter to make them more flavorful, although plain, raw tomatoes are surely healthier!
There! It feels so good to get started on my new year's resolutions, even if I did start with something easy. Hopefully by 2014 I'll have all sorts of awesome new skills, and maybe you'll even be a little intimidated by me, but I'll be like, "Hey, it's alright! We can still be friends!"
Grazie! A dopo.
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