Citizens – I HAVE RETURNED!
My apologies for going dark these last 2+ months – both My mental and physical health took a NASTY turn for the worse, but after significant recuperative time and a profound NEED to return to My beloved TFD Nation – I rise like the Phoenix burning undimmed and in fact brighter than ever! To celebrate the fusion of My mind and body as one, today I shall be sharing a rare fusion recipe with the Citizens who – unknowingly – helped Me get through a true crisis. I give you the unique pairing of classic Southern food with Jewish sensibilities to create fried green tomatoes, Shtetl-style!
If you have never watched the movie of the same name, you are missing out on a wonderful distillation of early 20th century conservative Southern culture combined with a sensitive portrayal of love rarely seen in Hollywood movies of this œuvre. All as aptly demonstrated by this seminal clip from the film (did you catch the pun of œuvre plus seminal – a reference to this love child fusion recipe made manifest in verbiage!):
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a 1987 novel by American author Fannie Flagg. Set in Alabama, it weaves together the past and the present through the blossoming friendship between Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife, and Ninny Threadgoode, an elderly woman who lives in a nursing home. Every week Evelyn visits Ninny, who recounts stories of her youth in Whistle Stop, Alabama, where her sister-in-law, Idgie, and her friend, Ruth, ran a café.
These stories, along with Ninny’s friendship, enable Evelyn to begin a new, satisfying life while allowing the people and stories of Ninny’s youth to live on. The book explores themes of family, aging, lesbianism, and the dehumanizing effects of racism on both black and white people. It was adapted as a feature film, Fried Green Tomatoes, which was released in 1991. A television series adaptation was reportedly in development as of 2020, with executive producers Norman Lear and Reba McEntire, who was also to star but the series was abandoned.
Although Idgie and Ruth’s relationship is not explicitly described as lesbian, every resident both knows about it and accepts it; lesbianism is a theme in the novel.
The novel explores women’s aging through the characters of Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode. Evelyn goes through menopause and Mrs. Threadgoode deteriorates with age. As the novel follows Sipsey’s family, it analyzes the stark challenges they and other African Americans faced in society from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Memories and storytelling are important elements of the novel. The moral justifications of murder and euthanasia are touched upon.
Food is another literary theme in the novel. At the end of the book, Flagg included the recipes served by the cafe (including their signature fried green tomatoes).
With all this buildup of the Southern heritage of this recipe by Me…you should in fact know it’s actually a myth!
Fried green tomatoes are in fact actually a Northern invention (sort of – more on this in a moment)! Fried green tomatoes are usually associated with the South, but if you were to look in Southern newspapers or cookbooks before the 1970s, you wouldn’t find mention of them anywhere.
Historian Robert F. Moss found that from 1900-1911, there were 11 recipes for the dish published in U.S. newspapers. The articles were from the Northeastern United States and Midwestern United States. According to Moss, instructors in cooking in home economics courses adopted the dish. The sole instance of the recipe in the 1920s in the southern United States’ newspapers came from an article that was in syndication across the United States, instead of being specifically from the South.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, there was one instance of the recipe in Southern American newspapers. After the film Fried Green Tomatoes was released, Americans mistakenly associated the dish with the South despite the lack of evidence that the dish was previously widely prepared in the U.S. South.
It actually dates back historically to the 19th century North, where weary farmers in Indiana, Ohio and other cold-prone parts of the country were furiously harvesting their unripened tomato crops to save them from impending early frosts. As a result, food historians theorize that fried green tomatoes were created out of frugality and the result of a thriftiness brought on by harsh economic necessity.
With that said, while fried green tomatoes may in fact be carpetbaggers, they are as embedded today in the Southern zeitgeist as pimento cheese…and you can thank Hollywood for it. The Southern setting for the movie and all those tantalizing fried green tomatoes served up at the Whistle Stop Cafe changed the way people think about them, leading almost everyone to believe they have always belonged to the South. Of course, a good many Southerners took a cue from their Northern brethren and had been cooking up green tomatoes for a long time before the big screen made everyone hungry for them.
Now, you may be asking why I – the Hetman of History, who traditionally avoids so-called fusion recipes like the plague – would seek to combine Jewish cuisine with Southern (or is it Northern?) for no apparent reason.
Answer – there is ALWAYS a reason with The Food Dictator! While the dish did indeed emigrate to the South from the North, it did not ORIGINATE with the North – it in fact originated with European emigré Jews! We have been frying things in oil for thousands of years, and as we moved from place to place due to being exiled from so many different countries, we took the dishes we created with us and they were adopted as “native” to where we emigrated. For example, British fish and chips was a Jewish invention, as were the famous fried artichokes of Rome (at least they had the decency to acknowledge the dish’s genesis, unlike the British).
Fried green tomatoes were actually brought to the US in the 19th century by poor Jewish immigrants (probably of Roman Italian descent) and later appeared in non-Jewish Northeastern and Midwestern cookbooks, from which it then migrated southwards like the Jews in Exodus. Professor Moss himself believes the dish originated from those areas, “perhaps with a link to Jewish immigrants”. He found recipes for it in several Jewish and Midwestern cookbooks of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, but none in Southern cookbooks and hardly any in Southern newspapers – the first appearances were specifically in two Jewish-American cookbooks published in 1889 and 1919.
So – the truth is this entire post was a psych-out (an oblique reference to My depression) – this is in fact NOT a fusion recipe at all, but rather a teshuvah (“return” in Hebrew) of a prodigal son to the fold (a reference to the upcoming holiday of Pesach (Passover))!
Now – with the history out of the way, let’s proceed to the recipe at hand, shall we? 😀
To start with, you want to marinate your green tomatoes in whole buttermilk, which adds both acidity and tenderness to the final product. In addition and by divine Southern fiat, you must include some hot sauce (I prefer Tabasco in this recipe) – I add a unique Jewish touch as well by replacing some of the buttermilk of the original recipe with brine from a jar of kosher dill pickles with garlic! It adds an herbaceous note with garlic that I find works VERY well indeed in this recipe – try it and you’ll see for yourself!
The flour that the marinated tomatoes are dredged in is My own blend – and it plays a very important part in both the flavor and textural results of this recipe, so don’t skip these changes if you can possibly help it! To start, use A/P flour (I highly recommend this one!) with a hint of rice flour for added crispiness – an Asian secret to great fried anything! This organic brand of rice flour is My preferred choice for the recipe. Self-rising yellow cornmeal is also a component of the dredge – My preferred brand (fine-ground for tenderness) may be easily purchased from here.
A well-seasoned dredge is crucial for the success of the final product – and the Sultan of Spice does not disappoint in this realm (or any other, for that matter!)! Start with some Lawry’s Seasoning Salt as a good base, then add My preferred amounts of smoked paprika, garlic powder, puréed dried ramps (a kind of wild onion that grows throughout the South), sun-dried tomato powder to reinforce the tomato flavor, and dried hyssop thyme (the biblical Middle Eastern wild thyme enjoyed by Maimonides in his Passover charoset!) – all My preferred brands may be purchased through the links.
For an added Jewish flavor profile in the seasoning, I recommend adding some freshly-ground dill seed and freshly-ground coriander seed.
Now – for the final touch to truly make this JEWISH-STYLE – fry these in rendered chicken fat, aka “schmaltz” in Yiddish! It is the secret weapon that makes all Jewish food fried in it incredibly savory and delicious! A true Southerner would use bacon grease (not in this recipe, as it’s not kosher but it is assuredly delicious) and the health-conscious would use 100% corn oil – I recommend a 2:1 blend of schmaltz and corn oil.
For the ultimate dipping sauce – there is nothing finer than the flavorful GLORY that ALONE is My Mississippi comeback sauce, the recipe for which is here.
The South has a slew of iconic sauces: New Orleans has remoulade sauce, the Eastern half of North Carolina has vinegar-based barbecue sauce, and Mississippi has Comeback Sauce.
Now in case you haven’t heard of Comeback Sauce, don’t be surprised. It is barely known outside the Southern United States. That said, you’ve actually tried it if you’ve ever eaten a “Bloomin’ Onion” at Outback Steakhouse. You can use this delectable multi-purpose sauce as a salad dressing, a dip for appetizers, or just on crackers for a snack mixed with a bit of cream cheese. A cross somewhere between a rémoulade sauce and Thousand Island salad dressing, this is one sauce that can be claimed as a Mississippi original.
Comeback sauce originated in the 1930s at a Greek restaurant, The Rotisserie, located in Jackson, Mississippi. Known back then as simply their house dressing, it very quickly caught on, spreading across the city to other restaurants and eventually across the South. Comeback’s essentials are garlic, chili sauce and mayonnaise. One theory about its name is that the recipe compels the diner to return for more. The versatility of Comeback sauce is legendary. It is universally used as a salad dressing, a dip for fries, a condiment to be served with onion rings or fried mushrooms, a dip for crudités, and more!
My Citizens, it feels good to be back amongst the salutatory members of TFD Nation once again – and I will do my level best to stay on an even keel both mentally and physically moving forward in the months ahead! I appreciate your loyalty, your support and your greatness of spirit – THANK YOU ALL!
Battle on – the Generalissimo
PrintThe Hirshon Southern Fried Green Tomatoes, Shtetl-Style
Ingredients
- 2 medium-sized green tomatoes
- 3/4 cup whole buttermilk
- 1/4 cup brine from quality kosher dill pickles with garlic – NOT pickles preserved in vinegar (TFD optional change, replace with buttermilk for classic recipe)
- 3 dashes Tabasco sauce
- ***
- Seasoned Flour Dredge:
- 3/8 cup all-purpose flour – TFD prefers Cairnspring organic Edison T85 flour
- 1/8 cup rice flour (TFD optional ingredient, replace with Cairnspring Edison T85 flour for classic recipe)
- 1/2 cup fine self-rising yellow cornmeal
- 2 1/2 tsp. Lawry’s Seasoning salt (strongly preferred) or just use kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp. freshly-ground black pepper
- 1 tsp. Burlap & Barrel smoked Spanish paprika
- 3/4 tsp. Burlap & Barrel purple stripe granulated garlic powder
- 1 1/2 tsp. Burlap & Barrel dried ramps and purée to a powder in the spice blender – this is TFD’s preference (if not available, instead use toasted granulated onion powder from Burlap & Barrel)
- ***
- Optional But Recommended Dredge Seasonings:
- 2 tsp. Burlap & Barrel sun-dried tomato powder (HIGHLY optional TFD addition to recipe, omit if you prefer)
- 1 tsp. Burlap & Barrel powdered flowering hyssop thyme (optional TFD ingredient, omit for classic recipe)
- 2 tsp. freshly-ground dill seed (HIGHLY optional TFD addition, but it makes the flavor profile classically Jewish – omit for standard recipe)
- 3/4 tsp. freshly-ground Indian coriander seeds (optional TFD addition to the recipe, omit for classic recipe)
- ***
- For Frying:
- 1/4 cup rendered chicken fat (HIGHLY optional TFD change to original recipe but strongly recommended – can replace with corn oil or for true Southerners, use bacon grease – but it’s obviously no longer “shtetl-style” if you do that)
- 1/8 cup corn oil, plus more if needed
- ***
- Hirshon Comeback sauce for dipping
Instructions
- Slice the tomatoes about ¼″ thick. Sprinkle with kosher salt and an equal amount of sugar, and allow to sit for about 5 minutes in a bowl – drain and remove liquid.
- Arrange drained tomatoes in a single layer on doubled paper towels. Gently press another paper towel on top. Let rest for 10 minutes.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, dill pickle brine and Tabasco until well blended.
- Place blotted tomato slices into Tabasco buttermilk; set aside. Combine flours, self-raising cornmeal, salt, pepper and seasoning herbs/spices in a small brown paper bag; set aside.
- Meanwhile, remove 3 or 4 tomato slices from the buttermilk, letting excess drip off; add to flour mixture in paper bag. Close bag, and shake gently until tomato slices are well coated. Put tomatoes on a wire grate.
- After 5 minutes or so, the tomatoes with begin to soak up some of the dredge mixture. Once this happens, dredge the tomatoes through the flour mixture a second time, shaking off the excess. This will help the tomatoes obtain an even, crispy outer layer. Place double-dredged tomato slices on wire grate.
- Repeat with the remaining tomato slices.
- Heat the corn oil, chicken fat or bacon grease (if using) in a heavy 12″ cast iron skillet over medium-high heat to 350 F. Shallow-fry the tomato slices, in batches if necessary, for 3 to 5 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove the cooked tomato slices to a doubled-up paper towel to drain.
- Serve with Tabasco and lemon wedges, if desired, plus comeback sauce.
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