My Morning Chocolate

Isn’t this a lovely picture of fried green tomatoes?

I would love to take credit for putting this dish together, but I can’t. This creation actually comes from my favorite Ocean City restaurant, The Shark.

During the summer months, fried green tomatoes are one of The Shark’s special appetizers. They bread their tomatoes, all locally grown and organic, in panko and bacon bits (it seems I unintentionally ate bacon again!), then top them with a crab meat salad. The tomatoes are thick and crispy, while the crab meat salad has a mayo-like creaminess.

(If you’re in Ocean City, Maryland, The Shark is worth a trip down Route 50. I love to have dinner there, but their $5.99 lunch specials – yesterday, a Cajun club sandwich, buffalo chicken flatbread pizza, and spicy fish burger – are an amazing deal.)

Until last week, these were the only fried green tomatoes I ever had.  Then, my parents brought green tomatoes to Ocean City and, after eating them at The Shark, we decided to fry some up oursevles.  (Can you do anything else with them?)

Ours was a simpler version of fried green tomatoes, a process that, I have to admit, I didn’t help out with much. Other than cutting the thick slices of tomatoes, one of which I coated in flour, I was purely a photographer and observer.

This meant I could say helpful things to my friend, Jessie, while she cooked like “Move your hand a little bit to the left” and “Could you please hold up that flour-coated tomato?”  I slowed her down, but hey, I was trying to get good pictures of the process.  (Note: it can be frustrating to cook with a food blogger!)

In between taking shots, I watched Jessie coat the thick tomato slices in seasoned flour, then lay them gently in a sizzling pan of olive oil until they turned a golden brown.

I daydreamed about the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, when Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary Louise Parker made their tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.

And I greedily grabbed the first tomato from the plate, unable to wait for it to cool off.  It was sour and salty, crisp and juicy.  Then, when we sat down to dinner, I ate three more.

Fried Green Tomatoes

To make a simple fried green tomato, you don’t need a recipe.  Here’s what I watched Jessie do:

1)  Cut the tomatoes into thick slices…

2)  Then, coat them on both sides with seasoned flour.  (Ours was seasoned with salt, pepper, and Old Bay.)

3)  Once dredged in flour, pan-fry the tomatoes using enough oil to generously coat the bottom of the pan.

4) Serve!

With this process, our tomatoes had a thin crust.

You could also try dipping your tomatoes in beaten eggs first, then flour. The eggs will help the flour stick to the tomato, which should give your tomatoes a thicker crust once they’re fried.  

If you’d like more detailed directions, check out this fried green tomato recipe from epicurious.com that uses cornmeal.

And if you just can’t learn enough about this Southern specialty, stop by Smithsonian magazine’s Food & Think blog to read about “The Surprising Origins of Fried Green Tomatoes.” (They may not be Southern specialties after all!)