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I think we’re being taken over by fried green tomatoes. I’ve never had fried green tomatoes before. I went to the farmers market, and there was a lovely and beautiful looking pile of green tomatoes. I had to buy them. HAD TO.
So I get home and I ask my twitter pals if they’re interested in a FGT post. A lot of people responded they were, and then I was led to Susan’s latest post of baked green tomatoes. Then I found out my landlord made some for dinner that same night. At least two more people said they’ve been thinking of making them. Clearly this is a conspiracy.
A tasty conspiracy.
As I said earlier, I’ve never had fried green tomatoes. I love tomatoes, but only when cooked. The idea of eating under ripe tomatoes on purpose freaked me out a little. But then I thought, hey, these are fried? What could possibly taste bad after frying?
When shopping for green tomatoes, it’s important to pick up under ripe, very firm, completely green tomatoes. They should be about the same size as a regular tomato. Smaller green tomatoes will taste bitter, and there are varieties of tomatoes (particularly heirloom varieties) that can be green and ripe at the same time, so make sure you don’t rely on color alone.
It’s a little disconcerting when you cut into a tomato and it sounds like a crisp apple, but that’s exactly what you want for this recipe.
After frying, they’re surprisingly tasty. They are sweet and tangy, still firm, and juicy–almost citrusy. The salty breading sets them off really nicely, and I topped them with a homemade balsamic glaze. They’re perfect for a light summer lunch or dinner when paired with some delicate baby greens, but they’re easy enough to make as a side dish.
Fried Green Tomatoes
Makes about 20 slices
4 Large, Under Ripe Green Tomatoes
Oil, for frying (peanut or canola)
Baby Greens, for serving
Cherry Tomatoes, for decoration
Balsamic Reduction (see recipe)
Breading Dry Mix
2 Cups Corn Flour/Meal
1/2 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1 Tbs plus 1 tsp Salt
1 Tbs Dried Italian Seasoning
1 tsp Fresh Cracked Black Pepper
Breading Wet Mix
1 Tbs Ener-G Egg Replacer Powder
3 Tbs Boiling Water
1/2 Cup Non-Dairy Milk
Core the green tomatoes and slice in to 1/2″ slices. If desired, season each side lightly with salt and pepper.
Lay tomato slices on paper towels and pat dry.
Mix together the dry seasoning mix and set aside.
Combine the boiling water and egg replacer powder and whisk until thick and foamy. Add to a separate large bowl. Whisk in the non-dairy milk until thick and frothy. Set aside. You should now have two bowls, one with the dry breading mix and one with the wet.
Heat a large cast-iron skillet until hot but not smoking with 1/4 to 1/2″ of oil in the bottom.
Dredge the tomato slices, four at a time, in the wet batter mix. Then place them into the bowl with the dry batter mix, pressing to make sure it sticks. Fry four at a time for 3 minutes a side, or until golden. Drain on paper towels.
Stack the fried green tomatoes on baby greens with sliced cherry tomatoes. Drizzle with balsamic reduction. Serve warm, while breading is still crispy.
August 15th, 2009
I tend to get my fresh vegetables on Tuesday, so by the time Sunday rolls around, I’m down a lot of produce. I wanted to make something yummy for dinner, but the only fresh veggie I had was an eggplant. My husband has undertaken a massive pantry operation (we have synched eLists and everything now), so I knew I had lasagna noodles, canned tomatoes, and pine nuts in with our non-perishables.
I’ve been wanting to play around with the idea of rolled lasagna for a while. It’s fun, easy, and not as messy to serve. I’ve found that vegan lasagna falls apart even more readily than its dairy counterpart since it doesn’t have solidifying cheese to keep it together. Rolled lasagna holds its shape marvelously and it’s attractive. It’s also a great way to make smaller portions of lasagna, if you don’t want a huge casserole dish full of it.
I baked mine in gratin dishes (you know me and individually portioned food). You can just as easily bake this in one large dish; there shouldn’t be a difference. You can also fill them with whatever you like. I think sundried tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, roasted peppers… any of those would be a fabulous addition. I’ll add some possible variations to the recipe below.
Eggplant and Pine Nut Rolled Lasagna
Serves 4 (easily adapted)
8 Lasagna Noodles
1 Eggplant
Olive Oil
Salt
Black Pepper
2+ Cups Marinara Sauce (your favorite)
2 Slices Bread, toasted (or prepared breadcrumbs)
Pine Nut Spread
1 Cup Pine Nuts
1 Tbs Water
1/2 tsp White Wine Vinegar, or lemon juice
1 tsp Dried Italian Herbs
1/4 – 1/2 tsp Salt
Variation Ideas:
Add 1/3 Cup of Sun Dried tomatoes to pine nut spread
Add 1 Cup of sauteed spinach when filling
Add fresh baby spinach leaves when filling
Add 1 Cup of sauteed mushrooms when filling
Add strips of sauteed summer squash when filling
Boil noodles in salted water until al dente. Drain and lay out the noodles on a cookie sheet, lightly spraying with oil so that they do not stick. Set aside.
Peel eggplant. I find the easiest way to do this is to cut off both ends and use the edge provided to get your vegetable peeler started. I’ve found it difficult to get the peeler to cut the skin otherwise.
Place the eggplant upright on the cutting board. Slice the eggplant in long, thin vertical slices. Then slice each of these in half again, also vertically. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
In a large non-stick or cast-iron skillet, begin browning the eggplant strips in olive oil, 2-3 Tbs a batch (or more). When strips are very tender and nicely browned on both sides, set aside.
In the hot skillet you cooked the eggplant in, add the pine nuts. Toast the pine nuts over medium-low heat until golden brown, being careful not to burn. Add the pine nuts to the work bowl of a food processor. Grind the nuts as well as you can, then add the remaining ingredients for the pine nut spread. Process until well combined.
Toast the bread and process into breadcrumbs.
Preheat oven to 400º F.
Assembly
Spread a little pine nut spread ontp each noodle. You don’t need a lot, it’s very rich! Add eggplant strips, as well as any other filling.
Roll up each noodle and place in your baking dish(es) seam-side down. Cover generously with sauce.
Top with breadcrumbs and bake for 20-25 minutes. Since everything is already cooked, they just need to heat up and slightly brown. If you’re baking them in individual gratin dishes as shown here, place all the dishes on a baking sheet for easier removal from the oven. Serve immediately!
January 12th, 2009
It’s Christmas Eve, and so my husband and I are about to hop in the car to visit his side of the family. I’m brining along these cute little gingerbread cakes to share for dessert.
These cakes are spicy and dense (in a good way) with just a tad of lemon cream cheese frosting to complement them. They have the consistency of a cake-y brownie but the flavor of gingerbread cookies. The petite cakes are about the size of cupcakes, but with a touch more style.
Frosting the sides of the cakes turned out to be a disaster. Feel free to try it, but all the cake crumbs made for a messy finish, even with a crum layer of icing to minimize them. I prefer the look of these bare-sided cakes, which has the extra benefit of better proportion of frosting to cake. If you like frosting but are easily overwhelmed by it, leaving the sides unfinished might be a good solution for you, too.
I baked these as 8×8 sheet cakes and then used a biscuit cutter to punch out small rounds after the cake had baked and cooled. You can also just make cupcakes if you don’t want to deal with the assembly.
Gingerbread Cakes
Makes 9 small layer cakes
2 Cups Flour
2 tsp Ginger
2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 Cup Molasses (unsulphured, like Grandma’s brand)
2/3 Cup Hot Water
1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Ener-g Egg, optional
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1/4 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1 lb Confectioner’s Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Zest from 1 Lemon
Preheat oven to 350º F.
Mix the flour, ginger, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl until well combined.
Prepare two 8×8 baking pans as follows: grease the pans with margarine. Lay a square of parchment paper down in the inside of the pans, cut to fit the bottoms. Grease the paper as well. Use some of the try mixture you just made to flour the pans, shaking/tapping out any extra.
Whisk molasses and hot water together.
Cream the margarine and sugar. Whip the mixture with the optional Ener-g egg until light and fluffy.
Add part of the molasses mixture and part of the margarine and sugar mixture to the dry ingredients. Begin to combine. As the ingredients come together, add more of the margarine mixture and more of the molasses mixture until everything has been incorporated. Whisk to remove lumps, but to not over-mix.
Pour the batter evenly into the two prepared pans. Bake at 350º F for 30-40 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean, or the top of the cake, when touched, springs back. Let cakes cool completely, then remove from the pan. You may need to use a knife to loosen the edges, but the parchment paper should keep the bottoms from sticking.
Once the cakes have cooled and have been removed from the pans, use a small biscuit cutter to cut 9 rounds from each cake.
Prepare frosting by beating all of the frosting ingredients in a stand mixee until well combined and fluffy.
Place a small amount of frosting on 9 rounds.
Stack the rounds.
Place the rest of the frosting in a piping bag and frost the top of each cake.
I garnished them with green and red nonpareils, but maraschino cherries would be awesome! Keep in an airtight container until ready to serve.
I hope you all have a great holiday season!
December 24th, 2008
This was such fun!
Just a little after 5PM I used Random.org to pick six winners. Random.org actually generates truly random numbers based on atmospheric noise, which is pretty neat if you’re a nerd like me. Here are the results!
So you don’t have to scroll through all 671 comments, here are the winners:
#226 Elizabeth
“i hope i win!!!”
#171 Emme
“Apple butter is my favorite — it’s like the essence of fall. The only thing that stands a chance of beating it is pumpkin butter ”
#518 Stephanie
“I love your site – the photos, the recipes, and the enthusiasm. Thanks for sharing your talents. I’ll definitely try out the iPhone app too. Way cool!”
#375 TiffanyL
“This is my first comment on your blog but I check it everyday for new amazing recipies and wonderful pics. You inspire me to be a better cook but more importantly to transition from a vegetarian to a vegan. what great work you do! Cheers
Oh did I also mention that I LOVE apple butter and I sometimes have a hard time finding it!
Tiffany”
#431 Angela
“Thanks so much for all your yummy recipes! The apple butter looks delicious!t”
#380 Ale
“Apple butter.. I’ve never tried it, but I saw a recipe of a cake that used apple butter. I think I’ll make some. I love your blog”
——————–
The winners should have an email from me in their inbox right now. Thanks to everyone for entering the contest. It was so much fun, I’m sure I’ll hold another one before too long. I love my readers! Yay!
November 11th, 2008
It’s well over 90º outside. I live at the top of a three family home, where the flat roof and lack of attic does a bang up job of trapping all the building’s heat in my living space. We have a few feeble fans running throughout the apartment, but there’s not much we can do during the hottest part of the day, especially during a heat wave.
The desire to cook is slowing ebbing out of me, so I wanted to take this opportunity to announce that VegNews Magazine has named me one of the top veg blogs of 2008!
You can find me and the 20 other bloggers who won in their July/August issue. I’m going to be at the launch party in San Francisco with my husband on June 26th, so if you’re there and you see a young-faced woman with short blond hair with a huge camera on her shouder, do come over and introduce yourself!
I thought I’d direct you to some no-cook or low-cook recipes in case you’re also caught in the heatwave. Here are some from the archives:
Hasperat!
Purple Cabbage Salad with Carrots, Almonds and Currants
I won’t blame you for eating all the Chickpea Salad
A stir-together peanut sauce that’s good on everything
Jerusalem Salad makes a great side dish
Tomato Basil Sandwiches aways work for me
Cucumber Tea Sandwiches are pretty, easy, and cooool
I’ll be back with a new recipe later this week!
June 9th, 2008
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