I picked up some green tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market last weekend, and the first thing I thought when I saw them was fried green tomatoes!!!
The basic recipe for fried green tomatoes is pretty darn simple. Slice the tomatoes. Dip in milk or buttermilk, then flour, then egg, then cornmeal. Fry in some oil.
My conundrum lies in how to make it vegan… the milk part is easy. It’s the egg part that is a little more tricky. I couldn’t decide weather I wanted to replace the egg with flax or try the Ener-G egg substitute. I decided to go with the flax because flax is super good for you with all its omega-3 deliciousness.
So here’s what I came up with…
Fried Green Tomatoes (vegan style)
Ingredients:
2 or 3 green tomatoes
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup soymilk or almond milk
2 Tablespoons ground flax + 6 Tablespoons water, whisked together
salt and pepper
Directions:
Line up an assembly line of each of these in bowls: soymilk, flour, flax + water mixture, cornmeal.
Slice your green tomatoes.
Dip them in the soymilk, then coat in flour. Then into the flax mixture, then the cornmeal.
Then either fry them in a little oil in a cast iron skillet (I used canola oil), or you can can give them a spritz from an olive oil mister and bake them. (next time I will bake them, but this time I wanted to see what they would taste like fried the good old fashioned way. I’m usually not much of a fryer though- it’s too greasy and too messy for me.)
Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper right after you take them out of the frying pan while they are still hot.
Serve ‘em up however you like- we’re simple, we like ours with a little ketchup. But if you are wanting to get a little fancy, I’d say they would be delicious served over some greens with a drizzle of that really delicious aged, syrupy balsamic vinegar! Ooh, or even over some grits with that same drizzle of balsamic- yum!
