Today at Joe Caputo & Sons they had beautiful, bright green, firm tomatoes. I thought longingly of the dish I would have made with them a couple of years back with a spicy tomato sauce and brown, bubbly cheese.
What to do? What to do? I’m really tired of making those vegan cheese sauces that are supposed to taste like cheese and don’t. Time to just focus on making something tasty.
Well, I bought one of those lovely tomatoes for myself along with a little fresh basil and some leeks, thinking I might get inspired. I hurried home with my find to see what I could concoct.
What you see is the result, and it was good! I sliced the tomato, then used my grandma’s routine for making her southern fried chicken: she dipped the chicken first in buttermilk, then in salted flour, then in buttermilk again and finally once again in flour. I used almond milk, though, and salted flaxseed instead of flour. It made a perfect crust. I dropped each piece into my little Waring Pro Fryer for 3 minutes at 375 degrees, and they came out perfectly, with a nice crispy crust.
I made a sauce by boiling one peeled potato, one carrot, one cut up leek, a tsp. of salt, a tsp. of onion powder and a good pinch of hot paprika in half a cup to one cup of water. As soon as the potatoes were soft, I put it all (including the cooking water) into my VitaMix and whizzed it with three tablespoons of oil. I used a some almond milk to thin it as needed and adjusted the seasoning. It came out nicely!
I drizzled the sauce over the finished tomatoes and sprinkled a little fresh basil on top. The only thing I would do differently next time is spice up the sauce a bit more. Oh, and reduce the quantity of the sauce. That one tomato made six slices — but one potato made enough sauce for about six tomatoes!
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