Fried Green Tomatoes

This isn't fried green tomatoes. It's just a little bit of little beets I harvested in our garden. These cooked up with some tiny carrots and butter and salt. Oh yum! And my picky non-vegetable girl couldn't get enough! Which was too bad because this was it. Not a big garden harvest this year.

But of green tomatoes, I have tons! I am ripening and will be using my friend's green banana trick, but meanwhile I am trying green tomato recipes.

I am a Northern girl and the first time I heard of fried green tomatoes was the movie, of course. I liked this movie, never read the book. But I seriously thought it must be something terrible like okra. But I know people from the South who love fried okra and this goes to show you that deep frying ANYTHING makes it wonderful. Incidently, I don't mind fried okra.

In my internet search for fried green tomato recipes there were many variations. Some with cornmeal, some without. Mostly the same. I decided to ask the Queen of Southern Cooking, Paula Deen for her favorite recipe. Of course, I couldn't ask her in person because I don't know her, but here is her recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes with Vidalia Onion Relish.

Being the creative cook I am, I tweaked her recipe and out of necessity because I didn't have all the ingredients, I tweaked it more. I followed a guide for making selfrising flour and buttermilk since being a Northern girl I don't keep those things around. I also added cornmeal. For the onion relish I had some small red onions from my garden, no chives and white sugar since I was out of brown. (I do keep this on hand but I have been making lots of cookies lately) I didn't measure very well so it turned out very tangy with my rice vinegar ( I used the seasoned kind) But it sure looks pretty! And it was very tasty.

Holy yummylicious! How come I never had these before???!!! Everyone in the family enjoyed these. Cute Lydia had ketchup with hers. I would change a couple things I did. I would use less cornmeal because it was a tad gritty. Not bad but I'm picky. And I used too much salt. This recipe has you salt the tomatoes and let them sit to let liquid off them. This is a good idea but I think I would pat them off next time, add less salt to my dredge and taste them before I salt them after the frying. My pink onion relish was fun and was better when it sat after a night in the fridge. I really want to try this recipe for tomatoes with this Buttermilk Lime Dressing. This recipe is all over the net but I like this blogger's description of it and how eating these together is a "salad". A green vegetable with dressing! (Ok we all know it's fruit)

The next day I put the few leftovers we had on the baking stone in the oven. Oh wow! Crispy and wonderful. These really remind me of zucchini tempura. I may not bother ripening the rest of these tomatoes.