Monday, October 26, 2009

Panko-Fried Green Tomatoes with Peanut Sauce


Having procured some green tomatoes at a farmers market I stumbled upon, it was only natural that I go straight for the Panko-Fried Green Tomatoes with Peanut Sauce (page 386). There's peanut butter involved, how could I even consider passing that up?

The fried tomatoes didn't quite work as I imagined. Either my panko pieces were too big or my tomatoes not wet enough to coat entirely, and what coating I did get on partially fell off into the skillet during turning. It may've also been due to the thickness of the slices: half of an inch seems a mighty big piece, but I followed the recipe. Next time I'll try slicing them much thinner. Still, anything coated in breadcrumbs and fried in oil is perfectly acceptable, and my underwhelmed opinion of the tomatoes didn't much matter once the sauce came into play. Suddenly, everything was gold.

The sauce. Is. Brilliant. If I died smothered in it, it would be a sweet sweet death – well, more like a sour-tart death, which would make it aaaaall the better. It's peanutty, it's tart with a hint of sweet, it's ace, der Hammer, fantastisch, très bon, all that. I'm keeping this one for smothering any sort of anything in, especially more breadcrumb-coated things. It really doesn't matter what's carrying it to my mouth as long as there's enough surface area.

(Note: It's wonderfully tart, which is right up my alley, but the intensity can be adjusted with more water or more sugar; just taste and stir.)

- - Ulpia, peanut sauce fiend extraordinaire - -

5 comments:

  1. Oh my that looks good! What an interesting combo--tomatoes and peanut sauce. I've got to make this just to try it out. Theoretically, it's not clicking for me, but the pic and your description make it something I'm curious to try!

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  2. That looks great!

    I have to look at the recipe to see her dredging method but whenever I use panko (and I use it a lot), I either make a wet batter to dunk the food in and then bread with panko or I do the soymilk, seasoned flour, soy milk, panko method to make sure the panko sticks to the food.

    Fried food + peanut sauce = win!

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  3. How does that second method work? She actually used no method at all, just toss 'em about and hope it sticks, which I wasn't sure about but decided to go with the recipe anyway and see how it works.

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  4. First you take your food and dip it in soy milk to moisten, then seasoned flour, then soy milk, then breadcrumbs. The flour + soy milk ends up creating a bit of a batter of sorts to allow the breadcrumbs to stick.

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  5. Thanks! I'll use that next time.

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