Over the last year, I’ve been swapping cookbooks with our cousin-in-law’s Grandma Patsy from West Texas, giving me the chance to try some Southern cooking. Over the summer we tested out okra two ways for the very first time from the Ropesville Cookbook that Patsy helped to publish. The next cookbook I received was Shirley B’s Country Cookin’ from a retired restaurateur in Anton Texas, full of down home family recipes like hush puppies, lemon pound cake, boiled shrimp, fried catfish, chicken and dumplings and more.

When two of the gals at work mentioned that they had a load of green tomatoes still on the vine, it was time for me to try the Fried Tomatoes recipe from Shirley B’s cookbook! I brought my big electric skillet to work along with the four ingredients needed, got set up on the loading dock and started to fry. By the time I was done, you could smell those fried tomatoes throughout the entire theater! I had never even tasted fried green tomatoes before, or cooked them, and they turned out delicious, tangy and tart. The staff and crew gobbled them up. After frying a few different color variations of the tomatoes, I could see why Shirley liked cooking with tomatoes that were starting to turn pink, they had a completely different, flavor, sweeter than the green.

I just received another cookbook from Patsy, Range Riders Cookin’, so I’m sorting through the recipes now, Cowboy Clyde’s Cabbage Salad, Lone Prairie Sheperd’s Pie, Virginia City Beef Brisket, Wild Bill’s Whiskey Biscuits or Jim Bob’s Peanut Brittle. Time to pull out the Dutch oven and get to work!

FRIED TOMATOES

“Most people use green tomatoes but I prefer the tomatoes that are turning pink.”

–Shirley B

Wash and slice 3-4 medium tomatoes (thick slices)

In a small bowl add 1 cup flour, ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon black pepper.

Add enough water to make a thick batter. (Should look like pancake batter.) Dip tomato slices in batter coating both sides and lay in a skillet of hot oil. Brown both sides and drain on a paper towel.

-Nancy