Wild-eyed tomato futures

[zdashamber]

I stopped by Trader Joes because I was in the neighborhood and found there a pound of "sugar plum" tomatoes, half-inch diameter sweet tomatoes. Forgive me/ they were tasty/ so sweet/ and so red. Munching on them tonight, I was thinking that their taste reminded me of something... Pie cherries!

Could I, I wondered, make a cherry pie out of cherry tomatoes?

Homemade Cherry Pie Filling
4 cups pitted tart cherries
3-4 tbsp. cornstarch
3/4 to 1 cup cherry juice
1/2 tsp. almond extract (optional)
1 cup sugar

If frozen cherries are used, heat in saucepan until juice flows as cherries thaw. Drain before cherries are warm. If cherries are sugared, reduce sugar in recipe. Stir sugar & cornstarch together. Add small amounts of juice to make a paste. Stir into remaining juice, cook, stirring until sauce thickens. Stir in drained cherries and almond extract. Cool.

For pie:
Put cherry pie filling in pastry-lined pie pan. Put top crust on. Bake at 425° for 40-50 minutes, until pie is bubbling and brown.

This recipe may be used in place of canned pie filling for the following recipes.

Bah! Almond extract is used to make dry horrid white cookies taste like they might at least have the benefit of poisoning you so that you don't have to eat more of them! But the rest of the recipe sounds good for a one-to-one swap, without the juice that I'd leave out in any case as a pie oughtta have some substance to it goshdarnit.

Side note: Pie crust: Do you guys have a whirly-slicer? I have found them to be the most excellent thing ever for making pie crust. A few cranks and the Crisco/butter and icewater are evenly distributed through the flour in pea-sized segments that have not been abused for long minutes with a fork. Don't know what a whirly-slicer is? Neither do I, or else I'd link a picture. They're clear squat cylinders with a crank in the lid that connects to blades or eggwhippers inside. You can trivially take every part apart to wash separately. They're practically required for making salsa. Lord only knows what fool name their sellers call them by.

Anyway, I hope to report back triumphantly at some future point when I have time to attempt this. My backup plan if it turns out horrible: Add Bacon.

Comments

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Tomatoes *are* a fruit, so it'd be an interesting experiment.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, I might want to examine a gooseberry pie recipe for the purpose, too. Gooseberries have the same hard rind/squirty seeds thing going, and are often tart like tomatoes.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Here's a gooseberry pie recipe for my reference:

INGREDIENTS

* 3 cups fresh gooseberries
* 2 cups white sugar
* 3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1 1/2 tablespoons white sugar

DIRECTIONS

1. Stem and rinse berries.
2. Crush 1/2 cup berries in the bottom of a saucepan. Combine sugar, tapioca, and salt; mix with crushed berries. Cook and stir until mixture boils. Cook for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat, and add in remaining whole berries.
3. Pour fruit filling into pastry. Adjust top crust , cut slits for escape of steam. Brush with milk and sugar.
4. Bake at 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) for 35 minutes.

I'd use a deal less sugar and swap the tapioca for cornstarch, but the crushed vs whole thing sounds clever...

[follybard.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I once tried to make a smoothie out of some very ripe, delicious tomatoes from a co-worker's garden. I figured, tomato-cream sauces are kind of sweet and tomato-ey and creamy all at the same time, so maybe this would be similar....

It turned out that the acidity of the tomatoes and the sweetness of the vanilla ice cream exactly cancelled each other out, and I was left with something that didn't taste like anything. It was weird. (But I drank it anyway.)

[simonepdx.livejournal.com]

You do realize you're now going to get about a hundred of those things in the mail, don't you? But I can't say I've ever seen a whirly slicer with a capacity bigger than about 2 cups... can you really make pie crust in that, or have you seen one bigger?

PS: if you want a recipe for tomato pudding, a SE US staple, lemme know :-)