Today was a rare treat. Neysa & I escaped for the day to the relaxed elegance of the Beaumont Inn's dining room in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. If you follow along, you'll have already read my prior blog post about the Beaumont. The menu was traditional, including "yellow legged" fried chicken so moist and juicy I could hardly stop eating it, and a side dish so familiar to our own table at home. Not too many folks today still make, or remember, what we call breaded tomatoes, but it's a regular menu item here and a handful of other established Kentucky restaurants. I'll have too lovingly correct even Helen & Chuck Dedman, inn keepers of the venerated Beaumont, about proper Southern gastronomic terminology. Our serving staff called them "stewed." These are certainly not stewed tomatoes, and I'd proudly explain that all my diners. Anyone can boil a tomato until it thickens, but this casserole, pudding, or whatever you wish to call it is much more complex, far richer to the palette, and hearkens to a time when our ancestors frugally accounted for their culinary resources all the while utilizing staples of sugar and butter to make something otherwise simple utterly succulent. And, they were done deliciously today by the Beaumont kitchen, so much so I had two helpings. I'm ashamed to give scant mention to the buttery mashed potatoes, Lima beans, hoe cakes, cornbread muffins, hot yeast rolls, pickled beats, corn pudding (see a future post!), and Bourbon laced bread pudding. Suffice it to say it was a small feast, all cooked to perfection, and requires my attendance very soon so as to study all these other flavors with more accurate attention. Helen Dear, save me a seat at the table!
The Buffet Line at the Beaumont Inn, now only offered on Fridays for Dinner (lunch to most of you, the noontime meal)
Breaded Tomatoes, or “Tomato Pudding”
©2017 gdg
By Gary Dean Gardner,
Independent Scholar of Southern History, Food, & Material Culture
Timeline
1550s-South American tomatoes grown in Italy
1710 - Reported as being grown in South Carolina gardens
1750s-Tomatoes widely grown for food
1781 - Thomas Jefferson grows tomatoes at Monticello
1812 - French introduction to New Orleans cuisine
1824 - First Virginia tomato recipes in Mary Randolph’s cookbook
1835 - First available in Shaker seed catalogs
1839 - First Kentucky tomato recipes in Lettice Bryan’s cookbook
1850s-First versions of sweetened baked tomato puddings & pies evolve in the upper South
Ingredients
1 stick (1/4 lb.) butter
½ tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
4-6 leftover biscuits
350 degree oven
Sometimes the simplest of foods escape our attention as we become more globally acclimated to once unheard of ingredients and cooking styles. Cooks, be they amateur or professional, as well as the recipients of their efforts, are bombarded in print and video, not to mention their local “mega” grocery store’s electronic end caps, by luscious looking temptations from every country and ethnicity imaginable, many ready to heat and eat at our leisure and convenience. We get so convinced of a contrived equation where “exotic + preserved/packaged + expensive = good food” that we lose sight of the basic true mathematical fact where instead “local + fresh/raw + simple preparation – overhead/advertising = good food.”
That to me is pretty simple & basic kitchen math, especially at mid to late summer when the fresh foods I love to eat and cook with are so plentiful I can buy them cheaply at the farmers’ market, or even have bushels given to me by my green thumbed & fingered father-in-law whose home vegetable garden takes on an appearance likened to the landscape of "Biltmore." My counting does get confused though when it comes to tomatoes. All of a sudden we seem to wake up one morning, having been tomato deprived for so long, only to discover that they were ripening at a rate faster than a super computer could calculate. Well, maybe not that fast, but I know by this point in time they’re already ruining faster than we can eat them. Ah, such adversity in life. But that adversity, and what we once foolishly thought would kill us, does make us stronger, and gives us a chance to eat summer's most prolifically harvested fruit in its freshest form, at least for a few months, enjoying a taste canned tomatoes just can’t quite fully deliver.
One of my favorite summertime dishes from childhood, my grandmother’s breaded tomatoes, is pretty much forgotten by many folks today as we become more sophisticated in our palates, due primarily to that lack of dependence upon farm fresh availability that generations past were accustomed to. While I will make them in the winter using canned tomatoes, there is just nothing like a steaming hot casserole dish of home grown heirloom breaded tomatoes. The name itself, at least as we term it, is descriptive but still fails to adequately convey the use of this summer produce staple as a fruit, which it certainly is, rather than a more “Spanish” style savory dish as we might find in the deeper coastal South. In fact, as we prepare the dish, it might be likened more to a non-traditional bread pudding or fruit cobbler than anything else. Others have called them stewed or even scalloped tomatoes, but generally these versions are related dishes and not quite the same.
The origin for this style of cooking the once feared “love apple” seems to have its roots in Virginia and the upper Carolina's, as it is virtually unheard of in regional culinary centers like Charleston, Savannah, or New Orleans. It may originate with the antebellum “Tomato Pie” found almost solely in the Tar Heel state. The predominance of sugar even suggests an association with the old Moravian cooks, and certainly my North Carolina rooted maternal ancestors perpetuated the dish in our family as we migrated westward into Middle Tennessee and finally into south central Kentucky by 1840. In fact, the preparation style as handed down to my mother seems to be rather unique to TN and the counties in KY where early Tennesseans mixed into the population, though her matriarchal Mercer County cooks retained a similar recipe.
In essence, breaded tomatoes are prepared in much the same way as traditional Southern “fried” apples (fried being another regional term referencing the cooking implement used more so than the actual process). Fresh tomatoes are peeled & seeded and placed in an iron skillet with adequate portions of butter and white sugar, with a dash of salt to enhance flavor. No onions, garlic, or Italian seasonings are used here. Just as with the skillet fried apples, the tomatoes are stirred on medium heat until reduction begins and the sugar & butter are thoroughly incorporated.
Taste as the mix reduces, adding additional salt (sparingly) and sugar per personal preference. Then, in a buttered baking dish, day old biscuits (preferably) are broken into bite sized pieces to cover the dish. Please do not ever use cornbread, and even white sandwich bread is not really recommended. Gumpy lumpy goo goo is not baby talk for yummy in the tummy or pleasing on the plate should you not heed my warning and use white sandwich bread. In Eastern Kentucky and elsewhere throughout the South we find many references to bread literally being dissolved into stewed tomatoes to thicken the juice, but that is not the texture we are seeking with breaded tomatoes. We want chunks of bread that will soak up the sweet thickened broth of the cooked tomatoes without their being incorporated into a sauce. We want to be able to bite into the bread to which clings the slightly syrupy chunks of tomato, again like we would find in a bread pudding, only here we omit the eggs and instead add fruit.
Pour the reduced tomatoes over the biscuits, making sure all the bread pieces soak up the sweetened mixture. IF you reduced this too much and it won’t easily pour, add either another tomato or water to thin out the mix. Sprinkle the surface with sugar, and bake until bubbly and just beginning to dry out on the top and form a slightly "crusty" appearance. The finished product should not need a bowl to contain it when being served. It is a Southern side, remember, so it needs to hold its own on the plate.
As mentioned, canned tomatoes work fine, but the fresh fruit is best, particularly when mixing yellow, orange & red heirloom varieties. By not relying solely upon red tomatoes, you reduce the acid and add natural sweetness. On family tables in Taylor and La Rue Counties, though certainly sweet enough for dessert, we would never substitute this for the traditional sweet end to a meal. Rather the breaded tomatoes take their place on the plate as a colorful & rich side dish, verifying the fabled Southern sweet tooth that requires sugar in all vegetables. For what it may be worth, don’t count the calories. Just convince yourself you’re eating your veggies, and don’t be surprised if you spoon out a second helping and opt to dismiss the coconut cake as completely unnecessary now!
Eat the Past; Live for Today!
This is a true favorite of mine! My family always added onion.... to this and most everything other than dessert. Yellow squash is a good addition too.
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