My Fried Green Tomatoes

10/28/2022

This year my hubby Tom's garden gifted us with oodles of produce. Over the summer and into fall we feasted on home-grown blueberries, corn, green beans, peppers and tomatoes. In fact, Farmer Tom picked the final crop of peppers and tomatoes a few days ago, just ahead of the predicted first frost.
Among the tomatoes were a batch that didn't quite make it to the finish line before the frost. They were still green, but Tom picked them anyway.

Which now left a question to be begged: What does one do with a bowlful of green tomatoes?
I'd heard of such a thing as fried green tomatoes. Or, that is to say, I'd head of a movie called "Fried Green Tomatoes,"

...which, though it may well have been a worthwhile flick, I made a point of not seeing as it looked to me like a down-home schmaltz overdose.
But anyway, as I sat gazing at this bowl of green tomatoes,

...I found myself thinking of that film, the title of which suggested that fried green tomatoes must be an actual thing.
So I looked online and, yep, sure enough, turns out that FGT is an actual thing.

However, the recipes tended to call for smothering the tomatoes in a heavy blanket of flour and breadcrumbs then giving them a hot grease bath.

No thank you, thought I. If I'm going to blow out my cholesterol it's going to have to be for something more worthwhile.

I scrolled around for something to do with green tomatoes that didn't involve deep-frying them. I found green tomato salsa, green tomato relish, green tomato chutney, all of which looked healthy enough. The only problem was, when would we ever eat that stuff? Then I came up with an idea of my own.
I have an terrific recipe for oven-fried eggplant. It's so good, the eggplant slices come out crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, not a bit greasy or mushy, and so tasty that, though one can serve the slices with a side of tomato sauce, they can even stand on their own, unsauced.
(My son Tommy, pictured here with his bride Emily,

... can gobble up a whole plateful of my oven-fried eggplant, just picking up the slices from the plate unadorned and munching on them potato chip-style).

Here's my simply super oven-fried eggplant recipe:

Simply Super Oven-fried Eggplant

Ingredients:
A couple of eggplants
Two eggs beaten with a little water
Bread Crumbs
Olive oil spray
Salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Spray a cookie sheet with olive oil spray. (Cover the cookie sheet first with aluminum foil if desired for easy clean-up).
Slice the eggplant -unpeeled - into rounds about 3/4" thick. Dip each round into the beaten egg then dredge through the bread crumbs. Place eggplant slices in a single layer on the sprayed cookie sheet. Spray the egg plant with the olive oil spray then sprinkle with salt. Turn each slice over and spray and salt the other side. Place the eggplant in the oven and bake for ten minutes, then flip each slice and bake for another ten minutes. Serve with sauce and a side of spaghetti or eat them Tommy- style.

(That is, just pick them up off the plate and eat them).
Anyway, I decided to try my oven-fried eggplant recipe on the green tomatoes. Thinking that the tomatoes might need a little extra flavor boost, I substituted Lawry's Garlic Salt and onion powder for the salt.

First I sliced the tomatoes.

I tasted one of the tomatoes. It tasted like nothing. Not good, not bad, just...nothing. It occurred to me that it might help to marinate the tomatoes before breading them, just to give them some flavor to start with. I found a bottle of balsamic vinaigrette dressing in the fridge, so I used that.