Fried Green Tomatoes and Ripening Green Tomatoes

It’s time for frost, and that meant a big harvest on Friday. This picture is the rest of our basil plants. We pulled them up by the roots and stuck them in a jar, because they smelled like heaven.

We also picked all the squash, of course. We’ll cook the ones with broken rinds, and store the others. (I’m nervous about that!)

We also have about ten million green tomatoes. I did a little research and found four options for ripening them. We’re trying all of them.

• Sunny window sill. For the ones that are beginning to ripen, I’m putting them, stem up, in a window to ripen. That’s what we’ve done all summer with the green ones that fell off.
• In a box in the garage. I’m told you can wrap single tomatoes in newspaper, and put them in a box no more than two layers deep. (Not sure why only two layers.) We’ll put the box in a dark, dry spot and check on them once in a while. I’m told it takes up to a month for them to ripen this way.
• In a paper bag, with an apple. I haven’t tried this before, but apples give off ethylene gas, which speeds up ripening. (I hear it works for bananas, too.) This is supposed to be faster.
• Whole plants hanging up in the garage. Crazy, I know. I’m going to try it with some cherry tomatoes. They haven’t really tasted that great since September, though, so I don’t have a lot of excitement there.

I’ll report back when I know how it’s working.

Meanwhile, we’re also having some fried green tomatoes… real food style.

• Salt & Pepper
• 1/2 – 1 cup almonds
• A few green tomatoes
• Olive or other oil for frying (I’ve been experimenting with grape seed oil)
• A couple of eggs
• Splash of milk or cream (optional)

(Why do I put “optional”? Everything’s optional in my recipes.)
First, salt and pepper the tomato slices. Let the tomatoes sit for 10 or 15 minutes. This helps the stuff stick better. (Trust me on that one. I tried skipping it.)

While you’re waiting, you can run the almonds in the food processor or blender until you have a pretty fine flour. (If you go too long, you’ll get almond butter, which is lovely, but not for this. So set the almond butter aside for later, and start over.) Put the almond flour in a shallow bowl.

Mix up the eggs, and add milk or cream if desired, and pour in another bowl.

Slice tomatoes. Then find a cute little kid to dip the tomatoes in the egg, then in the almond flour. Then fry those babies up. Cook on low heat for about 5 minutes on a side. I used a burner-buddy to keep the flour from scorching, because the tomatoes need to cook for a while.

That’s how I did it.  And… yum. They were good.