Posted by Ethne~
Well, Friends, you’ve asked for it; you’ve been waiting for
it; the season is finally here and the time has come for…FRIED GREEN TOMATOES!
 |
| Whit, Mom and I made fried green tomatoes for my birthday dinner |
If you’re thinking these are the breaded or battered kind
you get at the State Fair, you can stop reading now and come back
tomorrow. But that’d be a shame
because these are 1000% better than those. They have BACON and GRAVY. That’s right.
Thrifty Nana (my mom) has always grown tomatoes. I don’t ever remember our garden not having tomatoes in it. Besides fried green tomatoes, our other
favorite is a BLT. Do you see a
theme here? It’s called bacon.
Grandpa Paul (my dad) has been a Custer buff (as in the
Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876) his whole life – check out this Amazon link to his latest book After Custer, which is in its 2nd
hardcover printing! And this means
my whole life. Interpretation: my childhood was spent
visiting the battlefields of the Great Sioux War rather than Disney
World. Eventually Whit and I wizened
up and decreed that for every hour of museum/battlefield time, we were to
receive the equivalent hour of mall time.
Fair trade, which they made good on, knowing we would make their lives
living hell if they did not. Such
shrewd children. The point is that
TN is a very good cook and, being married to a Custer buff, she found and made
George A. Custer’s favorite food: fried green tomatoes.
If you are a friend of mine, I’ve likely made this recipe
for you. Here it is:
*Large green tomatoes.
[We tend to like the ones that are turning slightly red, though those ones don’t hold up as well to the
frying, so be aware of that.]
*Bacon drippings (the grease and crumbles from cooking the
bacon)
*Olive or canola oil
*Milk
*All-purpose unbleached flour
*Salt & pepper
We made this batch on my birthday and because we wanted to
spend time out on the deck being lazy/hanging out, we fried the bacon and
tomatoes in the convection oven, so those will be some of the pictures, but
I’ll explain the directions in the regular frying pan style. If you have a cast iron frying pan, use that – its is second to none!
Cook up your bacon in strips like you normally would in a
frying pan – over medium heat until it is crispy but not burnt. Allow it to cool on a plate and paper
towel (to absorb a little grease).
Chop it up into little bits and set aside. Set aside your frying pan and grease.
On a large plate, put a generous cup of flour – it doesn’t
have to be exact. Stir in a
tablespoon of salt and several grinds of black pepper.
Heat your bacon grease in the frying pan (use the same one
that you used before) to medium/medium-high heat. The heat isn’t an exact science, Friends, and I’m sorry
about that. If your stove says
that medium is a 4 and medium-high is a 6, try for a 5. You are frying the tomatoes, and the oil
will pop, but you don’t want to burn them, so you don’t want the heat too high,
either. If you don’t have a full
¼” of bacon grease covering the bottom of your frying pan, add some canola or
olive oil (lard would be even better, but we didn’t use that…) so you fry
things up properly.
Slice up the tomatoes to about ½” thick. You can use the ends, too, just cut out
the tough core where the stem attached.
Dip each side in the flour mixture – the moisture on the tomato will
make the flour stick to it.
 |
| Envision this is a frying pan |
The oil should be nice and hot by now. Carefully place in the tomato slices
until the pan is full. If you have
to make more than one batch, no biggie.
They don’t take that long to cook, so the first batch won’t get too cold
while you cook the second batch. If you're worried, put a piece of tin foil over the plate.
Cook the tomato slices, without moving them, for about five
minutes, until you see the moisture in the tops of the tomatoes start to
bubble. At this point, carefully
check the bottoms of the tomato to see if they are browning up. If so, gently flip them to the other
side and brown that side. If not,
allow the first side to brown a little longer.
 |
| See the moisture in the front? That's the tomato juice starting to bubble. This will happen in the frying pan too. |
When both sides are browned, GENTLY remove the browned
tomatoes from the pan and put on a plate.
These will be flimsy, Friends.
You have just fried up tomatoes, not chicken drumsticks; they are
delicate.
 |
| See how the green one in the middle held its shape better? |
You may find that you have to add a little extra oil to the
pan as you fry the tomatoes. Do
so. You don’t want the pan to dry
up or you will burn the tomatoes and you won’t be *frying* things anymore. Pointless.
After all the tomatoes are fried and resting on their
serving plate, pour off 80% of the remaining oil in the pan, but not the crumbs and drippings at the
bottom of the pan – that’s FLAVOR.
Keeping the pan on the stove over medium-low heat, to the remaining oil
and crumbs, add about 2 tablespoons of your flour/salt/pepper mixture. Stir it around until it is all
moistened by the oil. This is
called a roux and is the base of a white gravy. Get out your milk (whatever kind you use is fine – we use
1%) and pour in about 1 cup. Stir
this around – it will become like a gravy, but possibly still too thick. Add in a little more milk. Stir it around. Keep doing this until you get a
gravy-like consistency. You know
what gravy is like, so aim for that.
Don’t add too much milk at a time, though, or it will be too thin for
the flour to hold it together thickened.
Now add the bacon bits and let it bubble a minute or two until the bacon
bits are warmed up.
 |
| Stirring in the flour |
 |
| Now with 1% milk |
Pour the glorious bacon gravy over your fried green tomatoes
and serve up immediately.
 |
| This is the only after shot that was taken. |
You may be skeptical.
Well, think about it like this:
1) I consider my birthday the BEST DAY OF THE WHOLE YEAR (tied with the
birth of my children now), and this is a meal I chose to have; 2) We have blog
readers who know me from decades past who have requested this recipe; and 3)
this recipe is at least 140 years old, and likely much older. If it’s hung around this long, it’s
probably pretty effing good. TRUST
ME ON THIS. You’re welcome.
 |
| Whit and I did a little photo session with Theodore. He LOVED it. |
NOTE: I’d like to take this opportunity to note that I wrote
a thesis in college about the negative parts of American history and the Battle
of the Little Bighorn and the Great Sioux War are certainly some of those. The reason we have national parks that
remember such places and events encourages us to reflect on this – unlike
countries ruled by dictatorships which whitewash (or worse) the ugly sides of
their history, our government wants us to remember the bad with the good. I remember walking battlefields in lonely
Montana pastures and gullies as a kid, where as far as the eye could see, there
was nothing; but as far as my mind could see, there were tons of places for the
“Soldiers” and “Indians” to hide as my little kid imagination tried to picture
that a war (in America?!?) had actually taken place there. My dad’s latest book talks about what
happened after Custer’s fall at the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the buffalo were decimated, American Indians were placed on reservations and the
railroad connected the continent [among many other things, read the book].
110 years later, two little girls named Ethne and Whitney would scare
wildlife for miles across the eastern Montana plains if one of them caught
sight of a wood tick, and that would be the end of battlefield scouring for the
day. So let’s remember and
celebrate the negative history (such as 9/11) in our country and acknowledge each
and every day how blessed we are that our government (for all its failings, and
no matter whom you plan to vote for in November – this is not a political blog thankyouverymuch) will come out *with us*
on the other side all the better for having done so, and hopefully having
learned from some mistakes. Now go
eat some yummy historical food.
