I think the first time I cooked stuffed tomatoes was in Portugal. The markets on the Algarve were overflowing with delicous fruit and vegetables. They varied too much in shape and size ever to be acceptable to supermarkets, but they tasted sublime. I would walk all around the market, ostensibly comparing prices, but in reality, just soaking up the wonderful scents and sights. And as the food was entirely affordable, I could shop to my heart's content. I always think that a tomato will taste good if, when you sniff the stalk cluster left on (and it should always still be on!), it has an almost peppery scent to it. Most tomatoes I buy these days not only come without that little green star, but even when they do, have no scent and not much flavour. I can understand why when voyaging people sell up and move ashore, they nearly always start growing their own fruit and vegetables in an attempt to recapture the glorious produce of good markets. Some supermarkets sell 'beef' tomatoes and occasionally, these are fairly good. But the huge, oval, rather flat tomatoes I would buy in Latin countries, starting to split at the top because they are so engorged with juices, are but a distant memory. I used to buy them, cut the top off, stuff them and serve them for dinner the same evening. The taste is just so wonderful.
However, we must make the best of what we have and recently, I bought some tomatoes from Jack, who brings a well-supplied market stall to Russell every week, and I picked up a bag of tomatoes (it's OK, he takes back the plastic bags and re-uses them!), which contained two lovely, large tomatoes. They weren't the rich red of those in Portugal, nor bursting with luscious juices (considering it's August, mid-winter, they must have been grown in a poly-tunnel), but they brought back such wonderful memories that I had to stuff one for dinner. It was good, but ...
I generally find stuffed vegetables unsatisfactory and am convinced that they contradict the laws of physics. You remove all the flesh, cook it with other ingredients and then try to stuff the result back in the empty shell. I always have heaps left over because even softened, you still have all the original vegetable to put back in plus all the extra ingredients! The great thing about stuffed tomatoes, is that you don't use the tomato you take out (although you can use it in the accompanying dish), so that there is actually some room to take the stuffing. This recipe is a genuine voyaging recipe and small-income to boot. Good fresh tomatoes keep well at sea (and I doubt you could resist the temptation to eat them for long, anyway. Almonds, although not exactly cheap, are often grown in the same sort of places where you get these great, big tomatoes, and can be replaced with something cheaper (see Variations). You should get a week out of your mushrooms at sea, but can use dried if necessary. The tomatoes can be cooked in a variety of ways, which you can find in the Notes.
If you can buy really good tomatoes, this recipe is great for entertaining, being easy to prepare and very attractive - but don't get distracted and overcook the tomatoes!!
Serves 2
Ingredients
2 large, ripe tomatoes, at least 70mm/3in in diameter
1/2 cup almonds
1 tsp za'atar
1/2 to 1 tsp harissa
1/2 tsp garlic granules
2 mushrooms (50mm/2in dia)
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
Method:
- Cut the top off the tomatoes and set aside
- Depending on how ripe the tomatoes are, scoop out the flesh and seeds into a bowl, with a spoon - or a knife and spoon if the core is very hard. Leave a reasonable amount of flesh in the shell for taste and moisture.
- Now put the almonds, za'atar, harissa and garlic granules into a blender and pulse until the almonds are a coarse powder: better to have a few chunks of almonds remaining than to have almond butter! Chop the mushrooms coarsely and then pop them in the blender, together with the salt and pepper, for a few seconds. The end result is a crumbly paste.
- OR chop the almonds and mushrooms as finely as you can with your knife and mix them in a bowl with the rest of the ingredi ents.
- Now divide the mixture in two and spoon it into the tomatoes, pressing it down to fill the whole cavity. Put the top back on.
- Light the cooker and put on a flame tamer. Place a heavy-based pan on top and lower the tomatoes into it. Put the lid on and as soon as you can smell that the tomatoes are starting to cook, lower the heat right down. After 10 minutes or so, check them every couple minutes, so that you can take them out when they are cooked through, but before they collapse.
Carefully lift out the tomatoes and put on hot plates. Serve with rice, polenta, mashed potates, or whatever takes your fancy, really. I like to serve them with rice and wild rice in a sort of pilaf: fry an onion in olive oil with rice, until it's soft, chop up the remaining tomato and add that, and then throw in the rice and stir it around, for a few moments before pouring in water, 2:1, to cook it in the usual way.
You might want to make some sort of sauce to go over it, if you want something more moist. Or you can pour the sauce into the pan and cook the tomatoes in the sauce.
Notes:
- You can replace the garlic granules with 2 or 3 cloves of chopped garlic of you prefer, but the flavour of the granules spreads through the filling more effectively.
- Cooking: If you have an oven, the tomatoes can be baked in a dish, with or without extra sauce, on a medium setting, for about 20 minutes, if my memory serves. You can also cook them on a trivet in the pressure cooker, although this can be a bit fraught: if you overcook them even for a minute, they are likely to collapse on you. If, however, the cooker is large enough to take a bowl contining the tomatoes (and you can lift it out again without burning yourself), this would be a good choice, with or without extra sauce. You can cook them, again with or without extra sauce, in a good frying pan, as long as you have a domed lid which will fit over the tomatoes.
Variations:
- If you don't have za'atar, use thyme instead.
- Any other nut can be substituted for the almonds, from the lofty heights of pinenuts and macadamia, though hazelnuts, cashews and Brazil nuts down to blanched peanuts. I wouldn't recommend walnuts, however: in combination with the mushrooms, the stuffing would have to strong a flavour.
You will find many more recipes like this here.