Tomato Mountain

What to do with green tomatoes - From Doug

Thanks, Doug, for the ideas!

In Bogotá, Colombia, where I lived a long time ago, there were fast food chicken spit roasting places all over (Coco Rico etc). They had awesome crispy succulent little chickens of course, but they served them with two even better sides:

Little potatoes like the ones in this week’s box boiled and then dipped in a bowl of saturated salt solution so when you pull them out the salt crystallizes all over the skin of the potato like a crunchy spiderweb…

and green tomato relish/salad:
Hard crispy green tomato and about half as much harsh white onion diced into roughly 1/2 cm cubes, salt, lemon or lime juice, lots of strong fresh chopped cilantro, and a few thin rings of Ají peppers (tiny 1 cm chilies like a concentrated Thai pepper). There isn’t much spicy food in the Colombian diet but this sauce is one good example.  Let it sit for 15 minutes and all the harsh bitter spicy flavors have melded into something wonderfully refreshing, especially with a nice piece of chicken…  It looks like chunks of vegetable in a little water when it’s finished. Too harsh? Add more lemon and salt.

You can also stir fry green tomatoes like bitter melon with Chinese fermented black beans, chili, soy, ginger and garlic, sometimes a little stock or thickening cornstarch, or make a curry as with karela (the prickly bitter melon).

And then there are kosher pickled green tomatoes (go easy on the vinegar if you use it)…

Got to go make dinner; I’m hungry.