Fried Green Tomato

Okay

We're gonna start today, y'all, with a very, very traditional southern food

a fried green tomato. They're in a light buttermilk batter. Some people cook theirs in cornmeal

In fact, my grandmother Paul did. She would cook hers in cornmeal, and my mother would cook hers in flour

and I actually liked my mother's better. So that's the way I do them today

We're gonna take a green tomato, and we're gonna cut them about this thickness

And we're gonna throw these into a colander, and we're gonna toss them with salt

And this is a very important step because that salt is gonna pull out the moisture

in your green tomatoes so they won't get mushy on you after they're fried

And we're just gonna toss them around in that salt so that they're good and coated

All right, now we're gonna put these in a bowl and cover them in buttermilk

So we're gonna let those soak for a minute. I've got our pan nice and hot, and you can see I'm cooking in a black cast iron skillet

and I'm gonna just pour the peanut oil into that hot skillet

Let that get hot. So we're just gonna toss them in our self-rising flour and push them to the side

All right, I'm gonna wash my hands, and then we're gonna give our grease a water test real quick to see if it's ready for us

And I know y have seen me do the water test on my grease and that what we fixing to do now We killing two birds with one stone We going to wash my hands and we going to get some water over here to our pot And you can hear it sizzling so that lets me know it ready

I've just gotten to share with y'all a cute story. One night, I was just blown away by a guest that walked into the restaurant, Miss Bea Arthur

And I was so excited, I said, I'd go to bed with you every night

I crawl in the bed and watch the Golden Girls. And I said, well, now, what do you think you want to eat tonight

And she said, well, I love fried green tomatoes. She said, actually, I cook those at home

And I said, well, how do you cook them? She was so cute

She said, I serve them with a dollop of whipping cream. And a few minutes later, I went back out the table

She said, no, no, honey, I told you wrong. It's not whipping cream. It's sour cream

And I told you when I came into the kitchen a little while ago that we've got two traditional foods that we're giving a twist to

So I guess you're wondering, what in the world are we going to do with these fried green tomatoes

We're actually going to use them in eggs benedict. Instead of using the muffin, we're going to have a fried green tomato as our base

And think how many calories we're going to save doing away with that bread. That grease and flour, it ain't got no calories in it

While these are browning off I gonna go ahead and start on the hollandaise This is a great little recipe It no stress no strain We gonna start with two fresh egg yolks

I'm gonna just pour four tablespoons of cream. I'm gonna put a pinch of sugar and the juice of a half a lemon

And we're just gonna stir this over boiling water until it's thick and that's it

And this should take about three minutes. and if it gets too thick

I've got a little chicken stock over here that we'll thin it with because as soon as it's ready

I'm gonna take it off the heat and just let it sit on the side

We've got all of our liquid in there now, so we're gonna add my favorite ingredient, y'all

Just a little pat of butter. Now, the only thing about using double boilers

you always wanna make sure that the water does not touch the top part

of your double boiler. All right, let's check our tomatoes. They're great over here

So our tomatoes appear to be ready. I'm gonna take them out and I'm gonna put them on

a paper towel to drain all the peanut oil out of them

All right, that's starting to thicken a little bit around the edges. So we're just gonna put that to the side

and we're almost ready to assemble our dish. But before we can put it together, we got to have the eggs

I got a pot of water boiling right here and we gonna crack our egg And always remember just in case something wrong with your egg to crack it first and drop it in another bowl Before we drop our egg into our water

this is your secret ingredient for poaching eggs. If you'll put about a tablespoon of vinegar

in your boiling water, it will cause the egg to shrink and it won't go all over your pot

So we're gonna drop it in there and see how it's already curling up around itself

I'm just going to move those around a little bit just to make sure they don't stick to the pot

While they're cooking, I'm going to start assembling our plate. I've really worked up an appetite out there in those woods today

and we're going to start with two fried green tomatoes, and instead of the typical meat for this, which is Canadian bacon

we're going to use regular good old country bacon. I'm going to put it just like that

Isn't that a pretty poached egg? We're just gonna put it right on top of our tomato slice

And look at our hollandaise sauce. Just perfect. Little dollop on each egg

Look how pretty this dish is. And it's time to dig in

Look at that. Fried green tomato poached egg and bacon. Great Gertie, what a gash

That is out of this world. Thank you