Fried Green Sebago Tomatoes -- plus, Auntie Marialani's Cooking Show. Because wine.

Oh, you say Sebago, and I say, Sebahgo,
You say Tomato, and I say Tomahto,
Sebago! Tomato!
Sebahgo! Tomahto!
Let's call the whole thing off!

Ah, yes, Sebago tomatoes! As mentioned a couple of posts ago, it was the worst summer ever for chard and cukes in my garden - the chard never started and the last cuke of summer was sometime in August (whereas usually the cukes are wrapping up, oh, right about now), but oh, the tomatoes. That means, of course, that here at the end of the season, when the tomatoes have ceased to ripen, I find myself with a lot of green tomatoes to play with. There's a green tomato rice dish that TQ found on line the year of that terrible Northeast tomato blight, it's pretty yummy, and in past years, I've used up my green tomatoes in one big pot of that, but this year, I finally had enough that I was going to need to try something different.

 Some of them went into a stew - I'd made pernil and rice and beans on Saturday & that needed to get turned into something. That was pretty good but the tomatoes sort of melted in with everything else so well that they're not really detectable.

first pickings - more where that came from!


 Tonight I found myself lined up to escape work at a decent hour, though, and with a couple of suggestions that when one has green tomatoes, one should FRY green tomatoes, I decided it was time. Especially since Baydog had pretty much given me the recipe the other day. Funny, I look at that bag of produce up above and think "Green tomatoes. Peppers. Rosemary." Being a professional chef, Baydog looked at that same bag of random produce and says, "Fried green tomatoes with pesto, rosemary and jalapenos. $9.95" (the pesto, of course, was the thing I already KNEW I would be making from Saturday's pickings). Fuu gave me the idea to hold some of the rice & beans aside from the stew during a facebook discussion of my plans for these green tomatoes. Between those, I had a pretty good idea of what dinner was going to be tonight. I'd never tried frying green tomatoes before but I've fried other things - so I did a quick shopping trip after work for a couple of ingredients I was going to need  & then just came home and launched into it. Woohoo!

First step, very important...as any devotee of Auntie Marialani's Cooking Show knows, the wine must be not  too sweet, not too rancid, but jeeeees' right, you know?

What...you never heard of Auntie Marialani's Cooking Show? Oh noes. Well, don't worry, I'll fix that at the end. Anyways, got da wine, da suckah's perfect, so on with the cooking.

The hardest part was actually getting everything organized, but I think that's 'cause I was finishing the pesto at the same time and there was just enough overlap to be confusing- it was like "OK, most of the garlic gets run through the chopper, but 2 cloves just get sliced, and that little chunk of romano gets grated, but whoa, it doesn't go in ALL the pesto 'cause some's for the freezer..." - eventually got everything set though!

After that, it was pretty simple. Peppers and garlic sliced and diced, tomato slices dipped in egg and dredged in cornmeal (spiced up with a little black pepper and adobe seasoning), and then, let the frying begin!

Not bad for a first try, yeah?.I'm so glad only cooked 2 of the 4 big tomatoes I'd held aside from the stew - this was delicious, but really filling. Leftovers for breakfast!

And now, here's Auntie Marialani!