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Tomatoes on Crusts
Neatly wipe six even-sized, sound red tomatoes; cut them in halves crosswise, season the cut sides evenly with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and teaspoon sugar. Finely chop two branches parsley, one branch chervil and half bean garlic. Sprinkle the mixed herbs over the tomatoes evenly and lightly roll them in flour. Heat one and a half teaspoons melted butter in a large frying pan, arrange the tomatoes in the pan one beside another, and fry on the cut side for three minutes and on the uncut side for one minute only. Prepare twelve small, round toasts of the same size as the tomatoes, a quarter-inch thick; place a piece of tomato on top of each toast, cut side downward, arrange on a baking tin, place a very little bit of butter on top of each tomato, then set in a brisk oven for eight minutes. Remove, dress the crusts on a large dish, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward savoury of fried tomato halves on rounds of toast, with two quirks of translation worth sorting out before you start: the butter quantity and the herb names.
- "Half bean garlic"A literal rendering of the French gousse d'ail — a clove, not a bean. Half a clove, finely chopped, is what is meant, a small enough quantity that the garlic perfumes rather than dominates.
- "Branch" of parsley or chervilA sprig or small stem, roughly a tablespoon chopped for the two parsley branches and a teaspoon for the chervil. If chervil is unavailable, use a little more parsley plus a few tarragon leaves; dried chervil contributes almost nothing.
- The butter is under-measuredA teaspoon and a half of butter will not fry twelve tomato halves in a large pan; it will be absorbed by the flour almost at once and the pan will run dry. Use 2 to 3 tablespoons, adding more as the flour absorbs it, and keep the heat at medium so the coating browns rather than burns.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400–425F. Eight minutes at that heat is enough to heat the tomatoes through and crisp the toast underneath without collapsing the fruit.
- Choose firm tomatoes"Sound" here means unblemished and not spoiled. In practice a soft, fully ripe tomato will not survive being floured, fried on two sides and then baked, so use tomatoes that are red but still firm, and cut them crosswise through the equator as directed so each half keeps a wall of flesh.
- The three-minute cut sideAlmost all the browning happens in that first three minutes, face down in the fat. Do not move the halves during it, and do not crowd the pan — steam is the enemy of the flour crust.
- Toast the rounds firstCut the quarter-inch rounds from a firm white loaf and toast them dry before assembly. Untoasted bread will go soggy under the tomato juices in the oven.
- YieldTwelve crusts, which serves four as a first course or six as a garnish alongside roast or grilled meat.
This is a French kitchen preparation dressed in English words — the sort of vegetable savoury that filled out the middle of a long menu or accompanied a plain roast. The giveaways are in the language itself: "branches" of herbs, a "bean" of garlic translated straight from gousse, and the pairing of parsley with chervil, a herb far more common in French cooking than Anglo-American.