Monday, February 14, 2011

Diet fried green tomatoes

So who doesn't like fried green tomatoes the classic southern way, with a nice breaded crust that obviously came out ot a pan full of melted lard in the back room?  Except that I don't want to cook them in my back room.  Too much grease to deal with, and of course the caloric load is on the high side.

(I will digress.  I am perfectly willing to eat the occasional high-calorie treat, especially when the underlying food is a vegetable.  Broccoli with hollandaise, cauliflower with cheese sauce, fried zucchini, vegetable tempura, eggplant parmesan, all are wonderful, but you don't want to eat them that way every night unless you're a recovering anorexic.)

I have tried to fix green tomatoes with various kinds of breading and battering, and they all entailed a lot of work, a messy kitchen and coatings that often slipped off the tomatoes.  That's three strikes: a fattening food that is a pain to fix and doesn't even turn out perfect.
















Here's my alternative.  Fry the tomatoes in bacon grease, over high heat at first to get them nice and brown, then over lower heat to make them tender.  You can't possibly get this wrong, because the tomatoes taste great whether you cook them almost to mush or leave them almost crisp. 

Then if you want a fancy finish, deglaze the pan with a little Marsala wine and cook it down a minute into a sauce.  It's nice if there's enough sauce to also go on the fish or whatever else is on your plate.  I suspect you'll never have the urge to fix green tomatoes with a breading again.

2 comments:

  1. Where do you get low fat bacon grease??? :-)

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  2. well, you don't, but it doesn't take very much of it to taste wonderful

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