For those who might want something to do with fresh tomatoes besides serve slices on sandwiches or just straight-up eat them raw, here's a little collection of vintage stuffed tomato recipes. Let's start out with a recipe that might be good for a summer weekend brunch from The Meatless Cookbook (Irma Rhode, 1961).
Pretty easy: scoop out tomato pulp and break an egg into each tomato before baking! Of course, since the recipe is from the '60s, you have to serve it with white sauce, but the white sauce is flavored with the reduced tomato pulp. (I'd never tell anybody if you wanted to melt some cheese into that as well!)
If you're feeling a little more austere, maybe try something from the Mennonite classic More-with-Less Cookbook (Doris Janzen Longacre, copyright 1976, but mine is a 1981 edition).
Forgetting for a second that this was plain cooking, I kind of expected Tomatoes Stuffed with Spinach to be stuffed with creamed spinach or maybe even the Stouffer's Spinach Soufflé that I often see included in regional recipe cookbooks. Nope! We're lucky that the spinach is seasoned at all with a little onion, salt, and butter. There is no need to show off.
If you want tomatoes stuffed with more aggressively-seasoned greenery, maybe Broccoli-Stuffed Tomatoes from The Garden Club Cookbook Casseroles Including Breads (The Montgomery Federation of Garden Clubs, 1969) will be more your speed.
The broccoli stuffing gets not just onion but also bacon. Plus, the unspecified "cracker crumbs" might make things even better if you choose something flavored like Cheez-Its.
If you want something that has a bit more of a modern sensibility, capitalizing on the apparent recent "tinned fish" takeover of the internet, then Too Many Tomatoes, Squash, Beans, and Other Good Things: A Cookbook for When Your Garden Explodes (Lois M. Burrows and Laura G. Myers, 1976) offers Anchovy Stuffed Baked Tomatoes.
They are a little reminiscent of common stuffed peppers, but here, the rice is obviously mixed with anchovies, green onions, and herbs instead of ground beef and tomato sauce.
If you're more of a tuna than an anchovy fan, and if you love spending forever trying to stuff your tomatoes, then The New York Times Southern Heritage Cookbook (Jean Hewitt, 1976) recommends Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes.
While I often love recipes that double as crafts, spending a hot summer afternoon stuffing nearly 50 tiny tomatoes with tuna-and-egg salad does not sound like a great time. (If you really want a nice summer afternoon craft project, try ice cream instead!)
I hope everyone else will enjoy their farm-fresh tomatoes! I will happily continue to get mine out of a can, just like the 1960s and '70s families that got everything out of cans.
I love the recipe quantities for eggs in tomatoes. 6-12 tomatoes, 6-12 eggs, but the amount of cream sauce needed stays the same regardless of how many tomatoes and eggs one uses. I also fear that the white sauce will curdle from the tomato goo that you are supposed to mix in.
ReplyDeleteNow I know why all the young Mennonite women at the farmer's market are so impossibly thin in their bright red dresses and starched caps. If you food doesn't have any flavor, why eat it?
As for the stuffed cherry tomatoes, I'm imagining the fish and eggs going off while you are still trying to make your stuffed tomatoes. How long would that take? Better do it in a walk in cooler rather than you 105 degree kitchen!
The white sauce is probably mostly for show. That's why the amount doesn't matter. Nobody's going to eat it anyway. (Well, unless you add cheese.)
DeleteI can only hope that the cherry tomato stuffers were quick workers, as you note. Having them go bad would be a great way to make a LOT of people at a summer picnic sick. (Well, again, if anybody actually ate them.)