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Tomato Farci
Put a layer of tomatoes in the bottom of a baking dish, then a layer of bread crumbs, then a sprinkling of salt and pepper, then another layer of tomatoes, and so continue until the dish is full, having the last layer crumbs. Put a few bits of butter over the top and bake in a quick oven twenty minutes. Serve in the dish in which it was baked.
FRIED TOMATOES No.
I Wash and cut into halves six nice, smooth tomatoes. Place in a granite baking pan with the skin side down. Cut a quarter pound of butter in small pieces and place over the tomatoes, dust with salt and pepper, and stand over a moderate fire to fry slowly. When the tomatoes are tender, take them up carefully with a cake turner and slide them on a heated dish. Draw the baking pan over a quick fire, stir until the butter is a nice brown; then add two tablespoonfuls of flour; mix until smooth, add a pint of milk or cream, stir continually until it boils, season with salt and pepper to taste, pour over the tomatoes, and serve.
FRIED TOMATOES No. 2 Cut smooth, solid tomatoes into slices about an eighth of an inch in thickness, dry each slice carefully with a soft towel, then dust with salt and pepper. Beat an egg in a saucer until light, add to it a tablespoonful of boiling water. Dip each slice first in this and then in bread crumbs. Put two or three tablespoonfuls of lard or dripping in a frying pan ; when very hot, cover the bottom of the pan with the slices of tomatoes; fry brown on one side, then turn and brown the other. Take them up carefully with a cake turner, place on a heated dish, and serve.
Yellow tomatoes are especially nice done in this way.
Three tomato dishes in sequence: a layered bake and two versions of fried tomatoes. All three depend on tomatoes that are firm rather than dead ripe, or the layers collapse into soup and the slices fall apart in the pan.
- Quick ovenFor the farci, a quick oven is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty minutes at that heat should brown the crumb top while the tomatoes give up their juice; a cooler oven risks leaving the top pale and soggy.
- Skin the tomatoes for the bakeThe original does not say either way. Sliced unpeeled tomatoes shed curls of skin through the layers; a ten-second dip in boiling water and the skins slip off.
- Layer sizesSlice about half an inch thick and season each tomato layer, not just one. Finish with crumbs and dot with butter (the original calls for only a few bits) so the top toasts rather than dries.
- Granite baking panGranite ware is speckled enamel over steel, a common inexpensive pan of the period. Any heavy skillet or enameled cast-iron pan works for Fried Tomatoes No. 1; it must go from a moderate flame to a quick one to brown the butter.
- A quarter pound of butterFour ounces of butter for six halved tomatoes is period-generous, and it doubles as the fat for the pan sauce. Two ounces is enough for the tomatoes; add more when you make the roux if the pan looks dry.
- The pan sauceBrown the butter, not the flour alone, then add the two tablespoons flour and a pint (two cups) of milk. Whisk it in gradually or the tomato juice already in the pan will set the flour into lumps.
- Eighth-inch slicesFor No. 2 this is thinner than it sounds and matters: thick slices weep and the crumb coating slides off. Drying each slice on a towel is the hinge of the recipe, and salting them makes them wetter, so season just before dipping.
- Egg wash and frying fatOne egg with a tablespoon of boiling water thins the wash so it clings without gumming. Lard or beef dripping gives the cleanest brown; a neutral oil at about 350F does the same job.
- YieldFried Tomatoes No. 1 serves three or four as a side. The farci fills whatever dish you use and is meant to be brought to the table in it, so choose one you are happy to serve from.
Farci is French for stuffed, and the name sits oddly on what is plainly a scalloped tomato dish -- late nineteenth-century American cookbooks borrowed French vocabulary freely and not always accurately, and the heading may in fact belong to an adjacent recipe. Fried tomatoes in a milk gravy are often said to have been a farmhouse staple across much of the United States, made with green tomatoes early in the season and ripe ones later; the note that yellow tomatoes are "especially nice" is a reminder that the market then carried a wider range of colors and shapes than the uniform red slicer that came to dominate the twentieth century.