Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Schnitzel-style Green Tomatoes included)

 

Ingredients:

  • Green tomatoes
  • Corn meal
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Bacon (or just the drippings if you have it handy)
Instructions:
  1. If you don't have bacon fat handy, grease the bottom of a pan by cooking a layer of bacon
  2. Cut green tomatoes into 1/4 inch slices
  3. Add salt and pepper to each side of the sliced tomatoes
  4. Add corn meal to a small bowl and toss the sliced green tomatoes
  5. Once cooked through, remove bacon and transfer to plate with paper towels
  6. Pan fry the sliced tomatoes until browned on both sides
Yield: Availability of green tomatoes too varied to predict

Source: The novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Description:

This is another recipe from the back of the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I've already made the fried okra, but this one is the iconic dish the novel was named for. I had little hope that I would be able to make it this year because my tomato plants seemed spent, but they surprised us with a tiny crop of six small green fruit.

Since green tomatoes are considered underdeveloped, they are smaller by nature and you can't get them in grocery stores. If you want them, you have to grow them yourself. This is a funny problem to have, because they are considered the inferior form of a readily available product. My impression is that the reason this dish was chosen as the flagship for the novel was to highlight that the Whistle Stop Cafe is a small business that grows it's own food and can't afford to waste any of it. So the final crop needs to get used even if it is underripe. The fact that tomatoes are better for frying in their green state is kind of like finding a silver lining.

In the background of this image, there is bacon, potato pancakes and an egg. It's not a very attractive picture, I think the foods in the image are not very photogenic.

I fried the bacon partly for the drippings. The recipe just calls for the greese, which, as I explained in my fried okra entry, would make sense to have on hand if you worked in a diner. But I don't so I had to fry bacon to get the fat so I could make the dish. 

I personally found the tomatoes to be more palatable than the okra, but this could just be a regional preference on my behalf. There is another recipe based on green tomatoes, but it's fried with bread crumb instead of corn meal, and it includes milk gravy. Maybe next year.

Schnitzel-Breaded Green Tomatoes


Ingredients:
  • Green tomatoes
  • Flour
  • Egg
  • Bread crumbs
  • Cooking oil
Instructions
  1. Heat pan with cooking oil
  2. Slice green tomatoes
  3. Separate dishes into: flour, then egg, then breadcrumb
  4. Dip green tomato pieces in flour, then egg, then breadcrumb
  5. Pan fry until browned on both sides
Description:

This is basically the recipe I applied to schnitzel cutlets, but this time to green tomatoes. In my opinion, this way is far superior to the method in the book, unfortunately. It's the flagship recipe the novel is based on! If this one is underwhelming, I don't have much optimism for the rest of them

I tried the schnitzel style on zucchini slices as well. I've been trying to make breaded zucchini since I made them in a cooking class at a Big Brothers event as a kid. Never looked up a recipe for them, which probably would have made things easier. I think I finally successfully recreated them. Since it's just my schnitzel recipe applied to zucchini slices, I don't think it warrants an entry of its own.

In the background of the photo, you can see an omelet. I attempt these a lot, and I always break them. Like the breaded zucchini, I've never bothered to look up a recipe. For this one, I threw the leftover flour, breadcrumb, and egg into the mix and the omelette stayed intact. I know I still overcooked it. But it's something to consider going forward, I guess.

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