Somebody call Idgie Threadgoode

Thanks to the community church garden, I turned Casa d'Akre into the Whistle Stop Cafe tonight.  Don't worry, I'm just referring to the fried green tomatoes.  Neil is alive and well; no ribs served tonight!

So, as I told you last time, I visited the garden and plucked some perfectly beautiful green tomatoes. It's funny, growing up Southern, as I have, I never heard of fried green tomatoes until Fannie Flagg's book was made into a movie. Frankly, finding out that one of the '70's Match Game regulars was an author was the first revelation. Fried green tomatoes was the other.  In fact, when I was about 4, my first major transgression in life was when I ran inside to get mommy & daddy to take them out to see my giant pile of "green balls"  -AKA- my dad's immature tomato crop. 

Back before the great fire, the original Rockaway's had someone in the kitchen that was the fried green tomato master. After seeing the movie, I started ordering these babies.  Come to think of it, this was even before my raw, red tomato epiphany.  I still miss those fried greens. Whoever you were, I miss you, tomato frying chef master.

Tonight was a simple, yet simply wonderful, dinner of grilled ham, green beans and fried green tomatoes. It's been awhile since I've made them, but Neil and I agreed this was one pretty darn good batch! 

Take advantage of all the great produce that our ridiculously hot summers create.  Channel your inner Idgie but I wouldn't recommend sticking your bare hands into a honey hole.  Ain't nobody that lucky!

Yet another good salmon

Around here, we eat salmon as often as possible.  We eat it for the obvious reasons...it's good for us, it's versatile, it's tasty.  However, I think the main reason I continue to cook it often and try new recipes is that my 8 year old loves salmon.  I mean, she really loves it. Glazed with honey & vermouth, smoked on the grill, broiled with Dijon and bread crumb topping, any way you can come up with.  I found a recipe on Pinterest months ago for a teriyaki salmon with sriracha cream.  The photo is just beautiful and I have been going back and stalking my own Pinterest board to see the picture. My hold up in making it was that I didn't have any sriracha and when cruising through the grocery store, the thought of sriracha just never popped into my head.

Well, recently, I paid a little visit to one of my favorite places, the Chef'Store.  As I wandered slowly through the aisles, I spotted the sriracha.  Ah hah!  I snatched up a bottle and headed straight for the checkout.  I knew what we were having for dinner that night.  I got home, pulled up Pinterest and got started.  I made the teriyaki sauce from scratch, as outlined in the recipe, but I think you could easily get away with using prepared teriyaki, so don't let that deter you.  It was all very easy to prepare and the result was dynamite. I really love this girl's site too. It's called Damn Delicious and she's got tons of awesome recipes posted there.

Results for the Akre house?  Thumbs up from the little one and an exchange of cool guy nods between me and the hubster.

I think this looks just beautiful!

 One thing I'll say is that this makes way more sriracha cream than 3 people will eat at one sitting.  Probably more than even 6 people would use.  So, whatever could I do? 

Sriracha cream sauce ingredients

 I came up with an EXCELLENT use for the leftover sauce, if I do yell so myself in my shouty capitals. I fried up some green tomatoes and drizzled with the sauce.  You may have felt the Earth move a little that day.  Or, perhaps you heard the loud Hosanna! as I bit into that first one.  Crispy, tart, almost holy fried green tomatoes with an obligatory sprinkling of salt and that spicy sriracha deliciousness mixed all up in 'dere. 

I want another plate of these right now!

As I contemplated the success of this pairing, I began to imagine how else I could use up this divine leftover sauce. Some of my ideas were as a dip for boiled shrimp, mixed with cabbage for a spicy slaw on a fish or shrimp taco or even to shake up a chicken and waffle dealio.  So, don't worry about the amount of sauce this makes.  You'll find all kinds of great uses for it.  I'd love to hear about them.

Green Balls

As Southern as I am, there are some typically Southern foods that I simply did not grow up eating.  For example, collard greens and stewed tomatoes never, ever, ever made an appearance in our house.  And neither did fried green tomatoes.  The collards and stewed tomatoes were banished because my mom hated them, therefore, she wasn't going to cook them.  Makes sense if you think about it.  But the green tomatoes?  I don't remember any talk about either she or my dad being opposed to fried greens.  In fact, growing up I never heard anybody talk about this dish.  I never even heard of it until the movie came out. 

Even after the film, it was still a few years before I came across them in a restaurant.  Actually, it was the original Rockaway's that was serving them and I had to try it out.  I was instantly hooked.  Whoever was working in their kitchen at the time was the fried green tomato guru.  They were thin, but not so thin that you couldn't taste the tomato, which made them crazy crispy...which is a good thing, of course.  And, they had lots of cracked pepper in the batter which added to their fabulosity.  (I think I just invented that word.)

So, anyway, what does this have to do with my title?  

Nope, that's not it

Nope, nope, nope

I think that perhaps I was somehow destined to become an addicted lover of the fried green tomato.  When I was about 3 or 4, my dad planted a little garden in the backyard.  He had a bumper crop of tomatoes in the making.  He was quite proud of this stand of plants and excited about all the fruit it was producing.  Interestingly, my dad doesn't like tomatoes.  Oh, he'll eat cooked stuff like spaghetti, vegetable soup, pizza, etc. but raw tomatoes are not his deal. At All.  However, like all good Southerners, he planted them and has done so every year of my entire life.  

Now picture this:  toddler/pre-schooler out in the backyard playing, frolicking and generally being a cute little bundle of joy.  Now picture this: tall, leafy plants brimming with green balls.  I ask you, what little kid doesn't love balls?  You see where this is going I bet.  So, after a little work, I toddled up the back stairs to very excitedly summon mom and dad to come see.  "Come quick, come see!"  I took them out to the garden and beaming with pride showed them my enormous stack of green balls.  "Green balls!!" I exclaimed. 

Yep, that's it!

I don't remember exactly, but I think my dad may have shed a tear. Not sure because I believe my mom quickly ushered me inside to shelter me from any possible tomato-related wrath.

Fast forward to now.  I love fried green tomatoes.  I make them at home.  I order them in restaurants.  I've even had them at Paula Deen's place in Savannah.  (Yes, I admit I've been there.  But, I assure you...my accent is real and unexaggerated!)  For the longest time, the only way to get green tomatoes was to grow your own and pick them at the "green ball" stage.  However, they have started showing up in grocery stores and last week, I found a plethera of them at the farmer's market.  Happy, happy, joy, joy.  We bought about four of them and fried those babies up!  Even though I caused my dad some heartache all those years ago, I think that whole experience was just foreshadowing of my green tomato infatuation.

**Restaurant Review** Cafe Strudel, West Columbia

Today I had just enough time to meet my parents for a quick lunch, as we were on our way to the funeral of an old and good friend. :-(

Her church is in West Columbia, so we decided to pop in at Cafe Strudel.  I haven't been to Strudel in quite awhile, so I had no "top of mind" favorites.  I have friends who are long-time, hard-core Strudel fans who could've recited the menu to me, I bet.  Once I arrived, I had to make a very quick choice, since on the way I got stuck by a train and then got behind every person in Greater Columbia who was unaware that their cars come equipped with accelerators.  Anyway, here's how it all went down:

Dad ordered today's special: smoked salmon quesadilla.  Mom opted for the soup du jour (ham & bean) with 1/2 sandwich and I chose the "Lowcountry BLT wrap."  From all accounts, it seems I made the tastiest choice.

Per Jim (Dad) the quesadilla wasn't "what I expected."  It wasn't slices of smoked salmon with cream cheese and dill, but rather a spread of those ingredients, or as Dad referred to it, a "mush."  Decent flavor, but the consistency wasn't on the mark.  Per Dottie (Mom) the soup was lots of ham, very little bean and lots of broth.  Her sandwich is called the "Martino."  According to the description, it's a favorite for over 10 years.  I'm sure that's what prompted Mom to order it. The description, however, would have been exactly why I WOULD NOT have ordered it. Turkey, cheddar, olives...what?  Sounds like a gustatory assault to me. Graciously, Mom called her lunch "mediocre, at best."

Mine, was actually pretty good, but definitely something you can't eat everyday.  It was very rich and honestly, if I were teetering on the edge of hypercholesterolemia and a cardiac stent, it could have killed me.  Seriously though folks, the "Lowcountry BLT wrap" was a good choice. Spinach tortilla stuffed with pimento cheese (not too much..you know, there can be way too much!), bacon and fried green tomatoes.  I'm a sucker for fried greens which is funny because I can't deal with red tomatoes unless they are cooked.  No good ol' Southern tomato sandwiches for this girl.  And, who doesn't love bacon? I bet you even vegetarians would woop up on some bacon in a moment of weakness and when they thought no one was looking.  And, unlike most restaurants, this place does not skimp on the bacon.  A definite plus.  The FGT's were great...not greasy, good thickness so they were "al dente".  Ha!  Al dente fried green tomatoes...I slay me!

In the big picture, I think Strudel's allure is the fact that the people who run it are cool, they are inventive with their menu, even though it's not always "knock it out of the park" and the character of the place and location is appealing.  Is it the caliber of food that I seek out again and again?  No.  But, will I meet you there for lunch or brunch from time to time? Sure.