from sauce - soup - ketchup sun-dried
roasted or even raw of a tomato can
liven up pretty much any dish but that
was not always the case
so today we are going to make an early
Italian tomato recipe from the 18th
century called Pomodoro fed cheat the
Alera birthday tomatoes stuffed with
herbs then we'll take a look at how the
once vilified tomato made its way into
grocery stores around the world
this time on tasting history
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today's recipe comes from ilkook Oh
Galante or the gallant cook by Vincenzo
Corrado first published in the kingdom
of Naples in 1773 now it's not the first
European cookbook to use tomatoes and
recipes but it is the first that uses
them in ways that we would associate
with modern Italian cuisine so since
this is an Italian dish go ahead and
pour a glass of fine Italian wine or in
my case decent Californian wine and
let's get started
tomatoes stuffed with herbs mints
parsley onion sorrel and mint add ham
season with salt and pepper add egg yolk
and grated provo to de stuff the mixture
into the tomatoes fry them and serve
them with ham broth first thank you to
my friend Francesco Battaglini who
helped me translate that I would have
been lost without him especially when I
get to the ham broth part and frankly I
don't know what ham broth is and I don't
really want to make ham broth right now
so I'm just going to do the stuffed
tomatoes now the amounts of each
ingredient that you're going to need for
this recipe are going to vary depending
on the size of your tomatoes and how
many you want so you're gonna kind of
have to eyeball it what you'll need is
several small tomatoes you don't want
the big beefsteak ones but you also
don't want like tiny little heirloom
ones those are gonna be too hard to
stuff so something in the middle Italian
parsley onion sorrel now if you have
trouble finding sorrel and if you live
in the United States you're probably
gonna have trouble finding sorrel like I
did go ahead and use either arugula or
chard which is what I ended up using or
really any kind of bitter green is gonna
do the trick we make do mint
prosciutto egg yolks it's gonna be about
1 egg yolk to every one and a half or
two tomatoes depending on the size
Probert aura which is a fresh cheese
made from either cow or buffalo milk
also might be hard to find in the United
States so go ahead and use a fresh
mozzarella it'll do the trick and then
just a bit of salt and pepper and olive
oil for frying so to get started on the
filling mince your parsley sorrel or
whatever green you're using your mint
and the onion and mix them in a bowl
together then either chop or tear up
prosciutto into small pieces and mix
that in along with a bit of salt and
pepper then grate in a liberal amount of
cheese and drop in your egg yolks and
mix everything together until it forms a
paste super easy and super quick which
is great because that'll give us time to
see how the star of our dish made its
way onto menus worldwide now my toes are
in New World food and there is some
debate about exactly where in the new
world they came from you can still find
wild tomatoes in the Andes of Peru but
they were cultivated by around 700 AD
all over Central and South America but
it's the Aztecs that we can thank for
their modern English name tomato coming
from the Aztec word to mottle and it was
just one of many new world ingredients
that the Spanish conquistadors snapped
up and took back with them to Europe but
once they got their Tomatoes got some
mixed reviews Italian herbalist Pietro
Andre Mattioli who called it the apple
of gold or Palm D'Or where the Italians
get the word Pomodoro associated it with
the Mandrake which was a biblical
aphrodisiac but before long people began
associating it with belladonna or deadly
nightshade which was a popular poison at
the time and may have been the poison
that Juliet took to appear dead at the
end of the play not a great association
so it was time to give tomatoes a
rebrand with a new scientific name
unfortunately the rebrand sucked because
the scientific name for tomatoes is
lycopersicum s cool entombed or edible
wolf peach I'm guessing they did not
workshop that name because it's not
great and poor tomatoes reputation took
another hit
when Europe's elite thought that it was
killing them because it kind of was see
back in the 16th and 17th century the
elite of Europe were eating off of
pewter plates with peter forks and
knives
unfortunately pewter has led in it which
isn't enough to give you a cute lead
poisoning or anything like that unless
you put some highly acidic foods on it
which leached the lead out rather
quickly and that is what tomatoes do so
yeah so it didn't take long for Northern
Europeans to just completely abandon
eating tomatoes but they were still
grown in abundance in Britain
and the American colonies for decoration
they were kind of like the Christmas
tree ornaments of an English garden I
suppose but in southern Europe they must
have looked around and seen the poor
people eating them
not on pewter plates and they weren't
dying so they thought huh maybe we'll
give these things another shot and by
the end of the 18th century they were
all the rage in Italian cooking and it
must have been one of the descendants of
those Italian cooks who finally brought
eating the tomato to America though it
took quite some time which I've always
thought was weird because just down the
way in Mexico they were eating them this
entire time and like nobody in America
noticed I guess they were busy with
smallpox and stuff anyway in his book
the tomato in America Andrew Smith talks
about the shabby reputation this future
Bloody Mary ingredient had in the United
States I have two favorite quotes from
the book where people are throwing shade
on this not so deadly nightshade the
first comes from Pennsylvanian jb Garber
hardly two persons in a hundred on first
tasting it thought they would ever be
induced to taste that sour trash a
second time and as if taking Garber up
on some sort of dare SD Wilcox of the
Florida agriculturalists decided to make
his own tomato pie afterwards calling it
an arrant humbug and deserve it
forthwith to be consigned to the tomb of
all the Capulets here we are again with
that Romeo and Juliet thing saying must
have been a fan but then a miracle
happened back in old Napoli see the poor
of Naples had been putting tomatoes on
their flat breads for years then one day
in the 1880s while serving Queen
Margherita of Savoy Rafael a Esposito
added in basil and mozzarella the Queen
loved it the people loved it everyone
loved it and finally they brought it
over to America to change the face of
our nation forever - one filled with
pizza parlors so that's it everything's
hunky-dory not poisonous goes on pizza
tomatoes are in like Flynn almost see
there is still that age-old question of
is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable
hmm well botanically speaking it is a
fruit it is a plant's seed bearing
structure end of debate case closed
not so fast counselor I object because
according to the United States Supreme
Court a tomato is a vegetable no see the
tariff act of 1883 required a tax to be
put on any imported vegetables but not
fruit so when the state of New York
slapped a tariff on a shipment of
incoming Caribbean Tomatoes destined for
John Nixon company mr. Nix filed a
lawsuit claiming that tomatoes are a
fruit because they are so the case went
all the way up to the Supreme Court and
in 1893 after what seems like a lot of
lawyers reading the definitions of
fruits and vegetables from varying
dictionaries justice horace grey wrote
an opinion stating botanically speaking
tomatoes are the fruit of a vine just as
our cucumbers squashes beans and peas
but in the common language of the people
whether sellers or consumers of
provisions all these are vegetables but
lucky for us the pizza parlors of
America were not deterred just as I will
not be deterred from making the rest of
this recipe so now that your filling is
ready go ahead and cut the tops off of
your Tomatoes and scoop out the inside
with a spoon then go ahead and stuff the
tomatoes as full as you can now the
recipe says to fry these and I'm going
to do that but they do have raw egg in
them so I also ended up putting them
into the oven for just a few minutes
about 10 minutes because the center was
not getting to the temperature that you
need to cook egg so if you're worried
about raw egg go ahead and turn your
oven on to 350 Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius
then take out a frying pan and pour some
olive oil in it and turn it on to medium
heat once the oil is nice and hot set
the stuffed tomatoes into the oil and
let them cook for about 2 minutes which
will let them get some char on the
bottom then flip them over and cook the
tops for 2 or 3 minutes as well at this
point you're going to put that whole pan
into the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes
but if you want you can do like I did
and add a little extra cheese on top
because why not after about 10 minutes
of
and pull them out plate them up and go
ahead and serve hey voila though I
that's french I don't know what and here
it is in Italian anyway here are our
Tomatoes
they are gorgeous and they smell so good
there there's a little sweetness to the
scent but then you can also smell the
herbs which is really nice and a little
char which I like so here we go get a
lot of filling here
more filling that is wonderful
oh it's perfect for summer the the ham
actually really really comes through
that kind of that salty ham ham flavor
but then the herbs are really what your
what your tasting the tomato of course
your tasting as well but because we
scooped out the inside it's not as
overpowering of a tomato flavor unless
you're getting a really big bite of the
of the outside but oh they are lovely
and not that hard I think if you're
making like a heavy pasta dish or
something and looking for a lighter
appetizer this is the way to go really
not that hard and just lovely for summer
anyway if you do end up making them I
would love to see pictures so make sure
to tag me on Instagram or Twitter my
handles are down in the description and
I will see you next time I'm tasting
history
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