Not-Fried Green Tomatoes

This is my haul from the farm stand yesterday. I could have gone crazy but they only take cash and all I had on me was $3. Yep, I got all this for $3.

Which one of these vegetables got to be the shining star in my dinner last night?

If you couldn’t guess by the title of this post, it was the green tomatoes. Finding them, so big and perfect, threw my previous plan for dinner right out the window.

I’ve never cooked with green tomatoes before. The only dish I think of is, of course, Fried Green Tomatoes. Yes, I’ve seen the movie more than once. Yes, I cried when… well, if you’ve seen it, you know. But by far, my favorite scene in the movie is when Kathy Bates wraps herself up in plastic wrap. I hope I’m thinking of the right movie. Anyway…

I thought, I could bread and oven-fry the tomatoes… but that didn’t really thrill me. Then I thought, hmmm, maybe I could bake them and do something with crumbs to give them crunch but not take away from their great flavor. So this is what I came up with…

Sweet & Spicy Crispy Baked Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:

2 Large Green Tomatoes
Brown Sugar
Crushed cracker crumbs
Cayenne Pepper
Butter or similar spread (I used Brummel and Brown)
salt and Pepper
Cooking Spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut tomatoes in slices about 1/2 inch thick (about 4 slices to a tomato). Lay flat in baking pan sprayed with cooking spray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add about 1 tsp of brown sugar to each slice. Sprinkle each slice with cracker crumbs. Drop just a dot of butter on top of each slice. Bake for 25 minutes. Those are mine in the oven, I forgot to take a picture before I put them in. While those were baking, I made some Quinoa and while it was still hot, stirred in about 1/4 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese (I made 2 servings of Quinoa). I chopped up some of the remaining green tomato and threw that in with the cheesy Quinoa dish. What a yummy side!

There it is, the finished product. It smelled so great and tasted even better. Puppy wanted to sneak a taste so bad. Finally, he was distracted when I tossed him a rawhide and a cracker… which landed under the open dishwasher. He paid no notice.