Green tomato pie

Easily the weirdest thing I've cooked. I had these green tomatoes and was planning to pickle them, but since I had already gone through a bunch of green tomato pickles I thought, hm, maybe there's something else that can be done with green tomatoes? So I searched online and found salsas, pasta sauces, and... pie?!

I did a bit of googling to see if this was an isolated crazed person's recipe or whether indeed there was a tradition of green tomato pies... and indeed I found enough recipes to convince me that there was. It's basically an apple pie but with green tomatos -- the recipes are roughly the same, although some use cider vinegar instead of lemon juice.

How does it taste? I couldn't tell if I liked it or not -- I'm still not sure -- but I've had three slices already. I think I like it. I can't imagine I'd make it often. But if I saw it at a restaurant, I'd be eager to try their version. It's somehow both sweet and savory -- Joanie compared it to a sweet pickle, although it wasn't "pickle-y". You could eat it with ice cream. (And on the third slice, I did.)

The pie crust stuck to the pie pan, though, and I'm not sure why. It also didn't brown very well. My apple pie looked a bit better than this. And the Cooks Illustrated pie crust recipe is very, very crumbly -- which is intentional, so that when the apples in an apple pie cook down, the pie lid comes down with it -- but tomatoes don't reduce as much as apples, and it would be nice if the pie didn't fall apart when you tried to cut a slice. I'm all for taste over looks but this is a little ridiculous.

Posted by chris at October 31, 2004 11:15 PM