For dinner tonight I'm going to try that kefir fried chicken recipe I talked about the other day, so I have been pondering on what to serve it with. It's a Nigel Slater recipe and he serves his fried chicken sitting on some fried red capsicum. Well I have at great expense purchased one red pepper but then I wondered whether it might be better sitting on some fried tomatoes - a little bit of juice to go with the crisp. And then I remembered this recipe - Tomatoes with an anchovy crumb crust which comes from his book Eat - a recent purchase full of quick and easy ideas rather than recipes. I found the recipe/idea online on the Pipe Dreams from the Shire website - just scroll (or read) through the Jane Austen stuff and at the bottom you will come to the recipe. The picture is from Eat. Looks appetising doesn't it?
The only problem with that, however, is the anchovy - a David hate - but you could substitute capers, or just leave that bit out I suppose. So I decided to see if anyone else had any better ideas for frying tomatoes. Well yes and no it turns out. And I'm still a bit frustrated, because I know somewhere - I thought it was in a Jane Grigson book - somebody had a recipe which they said turned very ordinary tomatoes into something delicious, and I'm sure it involved frying and possibly cream. However, I still can't find it.
It's actually been a little bit difficult to ignore baked, and grilled as I searched, but I think I have succeeded. I have also ignored green tomatoes, which I'm sure I have written about before, and fried tomatoes that end up as soupy. I'm aiming for intact ones here.
We often had sliced fried tomatoes for breakfast and if there was no fried egg, I sometimes remember eating my fried tomatoes on fried bread. I tried to find a photograph of such a thing, but there were none. Well these days the full English breakfast which contains all of those unhealthy fatty things, has been made healthy - toast - and sourdough at that instead of white sliced, and baked or grilled tomatoes instead of fried. The eggs are more often poached as well. I absolutely get it and rarely indulge in deep frying for example these days, however, surely it's Ok to strike out into unhealthy every now and then. Or is it just that it's British and British cuisine is generally despised?
Nigella however, has an update which is just a tiny bit wicked, with her Tomato and fried bread hash. The bread is actually torn up and is probably sourdough to boot, and the fat is olive oil - no dripping here. Then there's Worcester sauce, Maldon sea salt and chives. And I'm sure it's lovely for a slightly wicked breakfast. You could put a poached egg on top as well - well it would definitely be poached these days - or maybe those silky scrambled ones.
Nigel Slater - in his Real Fast Food book, has the most basic recipe I could find for actual fried tomatoes. Although even he has gone for cherry tomatoes - which just didn't seem to exist in my youth. He calls it tomatoes fried with butter and sugar - yes sugar, but that brings out the sweetness that lies within even the most awfully tasteless tomatoes:
25g butter, 450g cherry tomatoes, scant 1/2 teaspoon sugar, salt, freshly ground black pepper. (We didn't have that either)
Melt the butter in a frying pan, when it foams add the tomatoes. Keep them moving while they cook, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle over the sugar, toss the tomatoes and add salt and pepper, the coarser the better. Serve hot with French bread." (Which didn't exist either)
I guess this recipe for Blistered tomatoes on the Downshiftology website is much the same thing, although there is garlic and parsley in the mix here. But then it's one of those template recipes which is just ripe for improvisation isn't it? Add spices, herbs and other flavourings at will.
I don't think it's quite what I'm looking for tonight however.
Before I really started to 'research' the whole thing I had thought, because I had that capsicum, that I could just make Delia's Piedmont peppers which I have made several times before, and which are possibly pinched from Elizabeth David, and there are also Elizabeth David's own Tomates Provençales which are halved, baked tomatoes topped with herbs and garlic. I also found a very similar recipe on the Mediterranean Dish website although hers were fried - Garlic fried tomatoes.
Only The Mediterranean Dish recipe is appropriate for this post, because it is actually fried, but the other two are baked. Not that that is a problem for tonight's dinner, and they are modern classics with ancient roots.
Still keeping it relatively simple I found two Ottolenghi examples - one of which his Hot charred tomatoes with cold yoghurt and now a modern classic, that I have yet to try. I think that is really such a star dish however, that it needs its own course. It's not a side dish. However he did also have Pan-fried tomatoes with cucumber salsa, a typically Ottolenghi way to make simple fried tomatoes very special. And there might just be a bit of cucumber left in the fridge, although it's probably gone off by now.
Both too good for a side-dish?
So I returned to the concept of breadcrumbs, and suchlike, and here we enter into simple versus more complicated. Simple first - Just coat them with something and fry and this is where we return to Nigel who has Fried tomatoes with coriander mayonnaise - I don't need the mayonnaise tonight. Basically you just coat the tomato slices with egg and then breadcrumbs and fry until crisp which Ottolenghi does too with his Fried tomatoes with goat's curd although he plonks his on a green salad and tops with goat's curd instead of providing mayonnaise. Well the possibilities are pretty endless for the extras here aren't they?
At this point I discovered that both the Greeks and the Italians had the original versions of this kind of treatment. In Real Fast Food, Nigel has a recipe for Pomodori fritti which is even simpler - as there is no egg bath. The tomato slices are simply coated in polenta and then fried in hot olive oil. He suggests you could then pile them into a baguette with a pesto mayonnaise. Sophia Young on the Taste website has a recipe for Pomodori fritti as well and the Greek version is represented here by Rosanna McPhee on the Great British Chefs website with her Tomatokeftedes - Greek tomato fritters There are lots of others.
We now seem to be calling them fritters, and here people start experimenting by stacking them with cheese - Best fried tomatoes/Kitchen Divas and Margherita fritters - Let's Talk Food/Cookpad. I also saw a couple of examples of people enclosing them in batter - either a whole cherry tomato as in Cherry tomato tempura on the Sotozen website or in the rather glorious looking Tomato fritters with butter beans and feta from Claire Ptak. You could just make the fritters and dip them into something else.
I think these are a step too far however. I'd like to keep it simple, so may just go back to Nigel's original Tomatoes with an anchovy crumb crust. Or, now having seen the possibilities, I could perhaps just fry some tomato with some capsicum, perhaps with the addition of a bit of celery, because David bought me a whole new bunch of celery to add to the half bunch I already have. My challenge for next week - when I may try the three ingredient thing, will be to find as many different ways to combine celery, leeks and mushrooms, maybe carrots too. I have lots of them.
Then again, maybe I'll just cook the asparagus I bought today. It is spring after all - well it's currently pouring with rain - a very springlike thing to my mind. Baked potato, roast potato? Mixed roast vegetables? Too many options but I had better make up my mind soon.
POSTSCRIPT
September 6
2023 - Words from Rachel Roddy
2022 - Brioche à l'ancienne
2021 - Nothing
2020 - Happy Father's Day
2019 - Nothing
2018 - Sancerre
2017 - Lunch in Second Home
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