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Tomato Farci
Cut the tomatoes in thick slices, put them in a frying pan in half an inch of hot oil. When tender, lift them with a broad knife to avoid breaking, and place them in a baking dish which has been spread with butter; cover the tomatoes with minced onion, parsley, salt, sugar and cayenne. Bake in a hot oven fifteen minutes.
A very loosely written recipe even by the standards of its period: no quantities, no yield, and a French name that does not quite describe what happens. The technique is sound if you supply the missing detail.
- "Farci" without stuffingFarci is French for stuffed, and the classic version hollows the tomato and fills it. Here the tomatoes are sliced and dressed on top, so treat the onion-parsley mixture as a topping and pack it on generously rather than scattering it.
- Hot ovenA "hot oven" in books of this era is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat is enough to set the topping and finish the slices, which are already cooked through from the pan.
- Choose firm fruitSlice thick, about three-quarters of an inch, from firm or slightly underripe tomatoes. Fully ripe summer tomatoes collapse in the oil and will not survive being lifted with the knife as directed.
- Half an inch of oilThis is shallow frying, not sautéing. Get the oil shimmering before the slices go in, work in batches, and do not crowd the pan or the tomatoes stew and fall apart.
- The onion needs helpRaw minced onion will still be sharp and crunchy after fifteen minutes under dry heat. Mince it very fine, or soften it in a little of the frying oil first, before combining with the parsley.
- Seasoning proportionsNone are given. For six thick slices, roughly one small onion, two tablespoons chopped parsley, half a teaspoon salt, a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of cayenne is a workable starting point. The sugar is there to balance the acidity, not to sweeten.
- A topping that brownsCooks of the period frequently bound such a mixture with buttered breadcrumbs. A few tablespoons stirred in gives the topping something to hold onto and a browned surface after fifteen minutes.
- Yield and servingTwo large tomatoes serve two as a hot side dish or a light lunch course. It is best eaten straight from the baking dish, as the slices weep as they cool.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated in the English-speaking world in the first decades of the twentieth century, driven by two currents that occasionally overlapped: the vegetarian and food-reform movements, and wartime conservation campaigns that urged households to observe meatless days. Recipes of this kind often belong squarely to the second impulse — the aim is not a vegetable dish for its own sake but something with enough savour and body to stand where a chop would have stood. That may account for the French name attached to a fairly plain preparation: borrowing culinary French arguably lent respectability to a dish built from a tomato and an onion, though this is conjecture. Stuffed and dressed tomatoes were themselves a relatively new domestic habit, since the tomato only became an unremarkable American and British kitchen staple over the course of the nineteenth century, well after it had settled into southern European cooking.