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Stuffed Tomatoes
(Pomodori ripieni) Select ripe middle-sized tomatoes, cut them in two equal parts and scoop out the inside seeds.
Season with salt and pepper and fill the tomatoes with the following hash, in such a way as to make the stuffing come over the edge of the half tomato:
Make a hash with onion, parsley and celery, put it on the fire with a piece of butter and when it is browned, put in a small handful of dried mushrooms previously softened in water and chopped very fine: add a tablespoonful of bread crumbs soaked in milk, season with salt and pepper and let the compound simmer, moistening with water if necessary. When you take from the fire add, when it is still lukewarm, grated cheese and a beaten yolk (or two) of egg, but seeing that the compound does not become too liquid.
When the tomatoes are filled, take them in the oven with a little butter and oil mixed together and serve them as a side-dish for roast beef or steak.
The stuffed tomatoes can be made simpler with a hash of garlic and parsley mixed with bread crumbs, salt and pepper and seasoned with oil when they are in the saucepan. 111
Maria Gentile's 1919 translation of Artusi-style Italian home cooking assumes a cook who knows what a battuto is and needs no timings. Here is what the page leaves out.
- The hinge: drain the shellsHalve the tomatoes, scoop them, then salt the cut sides and leave them upside down on a rack for 20-30 minutes. Skipping this is what turns baked stuffed tomatoes into a soupy dish. (The recipe's own warning about the stuffing not becoming "too liquid" is a separate point, about the cheese and yolk.)
- "Make a hash"This is a battuto — onion, parsley and celery chopped fine together, not a cooked hash. Figure one small onion, one celery rib and a generous handful of parsley for six tomato halves.
- Dried mushroomsDried porcini were the commonest dried mushroom in Italian cooking, and are the safe assumption here. Soak about 1/2 oz (15 g) in warm water for 20 minutes, chop fine, and strain the soaking liquid to use as the "water" for moistening the stuffing.
- Bread crumbs soaked in milkUse dry unseasoned crumbs or torn stale crumb, moistened with a couple of tablespoons of milk and squeezed. Modern packaged seasoned crumbs will fight the parsley and cheese.
- Grated cheeseParmigiano-Reggiano or grana. The instruction to add it and the yolk only when the mixture is lukewarm is deliberate: off the heat the yolk binds the stuffing rather than scrambling into it.
- OvenNone is given. 375-400F (190-200C) for 25-30 minutes suits it — long enough for the tomatoes to slump slightly and the crumb top to brown. Dot with butter and oil as directed and use a dish just large enough to hold them upright.
- YieldThe quantities above fill about three medium tomatoes, six halves, serving four alongside a roast. Scale the battuto rather than the crumbs if you want more filling.
Pomodori ripieni belongs to the class of Italian dishes built on a battuto, the finely chopped aromatic base of onion, parsley and celery that opens a great many recipes in nineteenth-century Italian cookery writing; browned in fat it becomes a soffritto. That this book pairs the tomatoes with roast beef or steak reflects its moment: The Italian Cook Book, translated and compiled by Maria Gentile and published in New York in 1919, was aimed at American households, and vegetables are repeatedly framed as side dishes to a joint of meat rather than as courses in their own right. The reliance on dried mushrooms rather than fresh is likewise period-typical: they kept and travelled well, and were a pantry staple where fresh mushrooms were seasonal and local. Tomatoes themselves, though now inseparable from the idea of Italian food, had only become widespread in Italian home cooking over the preceding century.