The Sweet Surprise of Green Tomato Pie
Let’s get this out there right at the beginning—fried green tomatoes are, undoubtedly, amazing.
I grew up in the land of all-night diners and am the last person who will tell you not to batter-fry a garden vegetable. So with that understanding in place, what I will say about the underutilized green tomato is that you shouldn’t only batter-fry them.
While we generally wait for fruits and vegetables to sweeten and achieve rainbow hues before bringing them into our kitchens, in the case of tomatoes we could be harvesting fruit in abundance throughout the growing season. Crisp and tart, green tomatoes (unripened fruit, as opposed to certain tomato varieties such as Green Zebra that retain a green color once ripe) are available from early summer through autumn and are as useful as many more common harvest items. But here in the Northeast, we often don’t think about green tomatoes until frost damages our cold-sensitive plants, ensuring that no more fruit will mature on the vine.
During my years running a community-supported agriculture program, I was regularly tasked with suggesting recipes for the bumper crop ingredients given to members in their weekly shares. As fall set in and overnight temperatures dipped lower, those shares inevitably included a sizeable quantity of green tomatoes. Since one can only eat so many crispy slices of the fried delicacies (though I, admittedly, can eat many), I began to do some research on other uses for the fruit, and landed—as I so often do—on a pie recipe.
Some people clean when they have downtime. Or go for a run. Or knit. Or woodwork. More often than not, I bake a pie and then, much to my husband’s lament, give it away as a gift. Pie is my go-to for parties or when someone has done me a favor or just because I need to use up some perishables before leaving town. If I have a few free hours and no set plan, the end result is often a pie. Even as I type these words, I am sitting under a hand-carved “homemade pies” sign that I traded pies for in a move that will forever serve as my most successful barter.
So yes, I am a big believer in pie, and for good reason. Not only does pie make people happy (it does, I promise), but it is available in all sorts of flavor-profiles and forms, providing creative cooks with options across growing, harvesting and storage seasons. Crustless shepherd’s pie is perfect when you are flush with meat and root vegetables. Potpie can easily incorporate root vegetables, peas, alliums like onions, leeks and garlic and herbs. Dessert pies can be made with nearly all berries and tree-fruit, along with carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkin.
Dessert pie can also, as it turns out, be made with green tomatoes.
Green tomato pie had been around in the southern United States for over a century, but that popularity has never translated to the Northern states for some reason. In the years since I began baking this crowd-pleasing dessert pie in the Northeast, it has been a first for nearly every taster.
Olive green inside and startlingly similar in flavor to apple pie, green tomato pie alternates layers of sweet crumble topping between cooked green tomatoes over a bottom crust, and uses those same autumnal spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom—so common in most apple pie recipes. Though the traditional pie uses a top crust as well, I opt for a crumble top in my green tomato pie recipe, and serve slices with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
This pie is so reminiscent of apple pie that once the sun sets on your backyard barbecue or harvest celebration, some of your friends may have a hard time believing that they are not, in fact, eating that familiar staple of American baking. And since green tomato pie can be enjoyed long before apples begin weighing down their branches, I no longer wait for tomato plants to frost in the fall to bake up this tart-and-sweet dessert.
Fried green tomatoes will likely never leave their spot on my list of beloved food items and they shouldn’t leave yours (especially when served up with some homemade garlic mayonnaise), but be sure to save room after dinner for a slice of sweet pie that will change how you think about the humble unripened tomato.
