At our last staff lunch, I made some healthy versions of southern classics, including the popular dish – Fried Green Tomatoes.  My healthified baked version was such a hit that I was asked to make it again, this time for our CSA customers.  And you guys were so intrigued that I promised to make it again and show you the step by step guide to delicious Un-Fried Green Tomatoes.  Here goes!

Like any good farm cook, I started out in the field…

We have buckets and buckets of ripe and ready tomatoes all over the farm (heaven!), but for this recipe I needed the green ones.

This internship has been such a fun experience for me.  There is truly nothing more fun than pulling your food straight out of the ground and onto your cutting board.

With my tomatoes in tow, I headed back to the kitchen and got to work slicing…

Because I was making samples for all the CSA members, and I knew how good the recipes was, I needed to make a LOT of tomatoes!

Next up – the breading.  For the tomato breading, you need to use equal parts flour and corn meal.  Because I had so many tomatoes, I used 3/4 cup whole wheat flour…

And 3/4 cup white corn meal. 

Mixed them together with a teaspoon each of sugar, salt, and black pepper. 

Before I got started on the breading, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and stuck my baking sheets inside to get hot and toasty.  Hot pans are key to good, crisp tomatoes!  Since my pans were busy heating up, I laid a few paper towels out on the counter to be a temporary landing zone for breaded tomatoes.

And then I got to work!  Here’s the point where you jump in and help me – take each green tomato slice…

And dunk it in a small dish of milk, making sure to coat both sides.

Then drop the tomato into your breading mixture…

And press it down firmly to make sure you get a good coating on each side.

Flip over and press down on each side – you want the entire tomato to be covered in the flour mixture, with as little green showing as possible,

By the end, you will have Super Mario Brother hands.  Do not be alarmed.

As you bread each tomato, lay them out gently on a paper towel.  Do NOT stack them!  Stacking breaded food = bad.

Once everything is breaded, carefully take your sheet pan out of the oven and spray it generously with olive oil spray.  Then lay out the tomatoes evenly…

And give the tops of the tomatoes another quick shot of olive oil spray.  Slide them back into the oven to bake for 40 minutes – flipping them over after 20. 

While the tomatoes are baking, it’s time to make the sauce.  Ohhhh yes the SAUCE!  This stuff is seriously amazing.  I can eat it up by itself with nothing more than a spoon.  Start with some chopped onion, white or red.

And toss it them into a sauté pan to brown and soften.

Chop up a boatload of mushrooms (that’s a technical term)…

And toss them into the onions after about 5 minutes have elapsed.

Stir the onions and mushrooms together for a few more minutes, until both are wilted and browned.

While you wait, chop up some tomatoes.

And then toss them on top of your onion and mushroom mixture. 

The tomatoes will give off a LOT of water, so the key to this sauce is to let it simmer long enough to cook out the extra liquid and let the flavors concentrate.  Let.it.cook.  Stir occasionally.

Okay 20 minutes have passed – time to flip the tomatoes!  You should see that they are much crispier now than they were when they first entered the oven. 

Using tongs, carefully flip each one and put your pan back in the oven to bake for an additional 20 minutes.

Check your sauce – it should have a nice rolling simmer going.  See the bubbles? 

Finally – after both sides of the tomatoes have had long enough to cook, they are ready to come out of the oven. 

They should be crispy and crunchy on the outside, and soft and sweet on the inside.  Yum.

The sauce should be done by now too – season to taste with salt and pepper, and spoon into a serving dish.

This sauce is aaaaaaaamazing.  I want to make vats of it and can it so that I can eat it on things all year long.  The secret to good sauce is simply letting it cook long enough. 

These tomatoes are perfect as a meal or an appetizer, because they are so simple and easy to eat!

Just pick it up with your fingers…

Get a good dunk into the sauce…

And take a bite!  Check out that gooey green middle.  Pure tomato heaven.

This is one of those recipes that sounds really complicated, but when you actually break down the steps and look at them, it is super simple.  Bread, bake, chop, simmer.  That’s all there is to it!

Enjoy! :)

I have been so busy showing you recipes and fun farm food that I haven’t told you one thing about this week!  And let me tell you, it has definitely been one of those weeks.  I have a huge school project due tomorrow, family issues at home, and our big trip to DC this weekend all weighing on my mind.  The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do when I got home late from work at 6:30pm was think about exercising.  Just as I considered blowing it off altogether, a little Tweet came across my screen telling me that Celeste was teaching the 7:15pm hot vinyasa yoga class tonight, and within five minutes I was in my yoga pants and back in my car heading to the studio. 

When I got home from work I was feeling sort of down and sad, and I knew I didn’t have it in me to push myself to do a hard workout.  So instead of giving up, I looked for someone else to push me.  And push me she DID!  I felt so much better the minute I hit the mat.  Yoga leaves me feeling peaceful and relaxed in a way that nothing else does.  I left the studio feeling refreshed and ready to face the rest of my week. 

Dinner tonight was LATE (after 9pm!) and super simple.  Since I’m not an every-meal-every-day food blogger, there’s a lot of stuff I eat that you guys don’t see.  And so often I am left wonderful, nice comments from people complimenting my culinary ability.  I thought tonight, just for fun, I would show you a completely non-gourmet or creative dish – just a few simple frozen ingredients, thrown together very quickly to create an easy, healthy dinner.

The fact is, there is NOT always time for chopping lots of fresh vegetables, making sauces from scratch, and devoting hours of your evening to your dinner.  But that doesn’t mean that an easy healthy dinner is out of the question.  Instead of heading to the fast food drive through, it is MUCH cheaper and easier to just head to your own freezer.  Tonight’s dinner – veggie burgers with Asian stir-fried vegetables – nothing to it. 

I heated up my wok and tossed in a bag of frozen broccoli, one bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables, and a handful of frozen edamame and corn.

Once the excess water was cooked out, I tossed it all in a bit of soy sauce, and added freshly diced avocado at the very end. 

Meanwhile, I heated up two of my very favorite vegetable masala burgers from Trader Joe’s…

Nothing special, but still tasty and healthy, and in the end that’s all that matters, right?

Our original plan for tomorrow was to work a half day and then drive to Charlottesville to spend the evening with the now-departed Kath and Matt!  But issues finding a dog-sitter left us here in Charlotte Thursday night – so sad to not see our friends.  :(  I’m working on training the dogs to take on a little more responsibility and not be quite so dependent, but until that happens, we’re in charge.  :)

The upside to not leaving until Friday though is that Casey found super cheap last minute flights for Friday morning, so now we get to fly instead of drive – SO much better!  And the cherry on top of the trip is that my wonderful and fabulous little sister is also flying in and meeting us there to help us search for our new home!!  Sarah has the rare ability to keep me calm and anxiety free – not always an easy task.  Crossing my fingers that we find a wonderful place to be our next home…

Off to bed – goodnight!  :)

Last week when we were going over my schedule and plans for the next few weeks at the farm, my boss told me that she needed me to come up with a healthy recipe for tomato pie.  I was slightly embarrassed to tell her that, while I was always happy to healthify a recipe, I had no clue was a tomato pie was.  Apparently it is a classic southern dish?  I’m sure someone out there can clue me in.

Through the power of Google, I started looking at tomato pie recipes to figure out the basic components of the dish.  Before I could create a healthy version, I needed to figure out the original!  From what I could tell, tomato pie is basically a mixture of tomatoes, basil, and a few other things baked in a pie crust and slathered with a heavy mixture of mayonnaise and a lot of cheese.  Eeek.

I found a few ideas I thought would work to lighten up the pie, and then I got to work.  I started by slicing up a few big tomatoes, and laying them out between paper towels to dry them out a bit.

I didn’t want all of the excess liquid from the tomatoes to make the crust soggy of the pie too runny.

One of the healthy specifications given to me by my boss was to make a pie crust without using any flour.  I considered a few different options, and ultimately settled on making the crust out of cooked brown rice. 

Did I tell you guys that I convinced my boss to order a rice cooker for the farm?  That’s how much I love this thing!  (Rice cooker post coming up soon – stay tuned!)

I combined a little over a cup of the cooked rice with 2 tbsp pesto, 1 tbsp parmesan cheese, and 1 whole egg.

And then things got messy.  Mixed it all up until it was well combined…

And pressed it into the bottom and sides of a 9’’ pie dish.

Popped it into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, and said a short prayer.

In the meantime, I got the filling ready for the pie.  I am a BIG onion fan, so you may notice that they creep into a lot of my recipes.  Typically at home I only use white onions, but here at the farm we only have the red guys.  Cooking with them this summer as made me appreciate red onions for their own distinct flavor.  I think they are WAY too strong raw, but I actually really like them cooked.

So speaking of cooked – I diced them up and tossed them into a hot sauté pan to soften and brown them.

And by the time that was done, my crust was ready!  Pictures don’t show you the fact that this thing was literally bubbling from the parmesan.

Between the pesto and the parmesan, it smelled amazing.  The edges had gotten a little bit crispy, and the melted cheese helped the base hold together pretty well.  I crossed my fingers that it would turn out to be an okay base for my pie. 

With my crust ready, it was time to assemble the main dish.  I started with a base of cooked red onions…

And then added a layer of thinly sliced tomatoes.

Topped that with a sprinkle of freshly chopped sweet and purple basil, and gave it a drizzle of delicious pesto sauce.

Because the focus of this pie was to be healthy, instead of adding extra layer of cheese, I added extra layers of tomatoes to bulk it up.  One more layer of delicious sliced tomatoes…

And the final cheese mixture on top – 1/4 cup grated parmesan, 1/4 cup grated gruyere, and 3 tbsp veganaise spread.  Veganaise isn’t typically something I have at home, but we use it on the farm as a mayonnaise substitute.  It didn’t seem like much cheesy topping when I put it on, but I knew it would distribute once it was melted in the oven.

Topped it off with one last sprinkle of fresh basil and a little pinch of salt, and then popped it into the oven at 350 degrees…

Forty minutes later?  Tomato pie!

The final product looked and SMELLED amazing!

It sort of reminded me of a quiche without eggs.  Sounds good to me!

Once the pie had cooled, the dinner plates were assembled for the farm owners to take with them to their other apartment.  And since the pie had been sliced into at that point, I figured it only made sense that I had a piece. 

Tasting is as much a part of the learning experience as cooking, right?

Having never had the “real” tomato pie myself, I can’t promise that this is a representative recreation.  But I can assure you that it was completely delicious and I wanted to eat the whole thing. 

The brown rice crust held up pretty well.  Even though it wasn’t crispy and crunchy like a traditional flour crust, it still gave stability to the dish, as well as great flavor from the cheese and pesto. 

Hopefully my boss thinks my recreation was as successful as I did!  I would definitely make this again for a brunch or lunch the next time we have friends or family visiting. 

One thing is for sure – I am not leaving the south without learning all of these classic southern dishes!  In fact, tomorrow I’ll be making more Un-Fried Green Tomatoes – stay tuned…

Are there any other classic southern dishes that need a healthy makeover?