Tomato Pie

It doesn't quite seem right to post a tomato recipe in the midst of this blight affecting the Northeast (check out this article on Civil Eats for some more information). The three farms that produce our farmshare haven't been hit, which is wonderful! They only have greenhouse tomatoes so far this season and we've only gotten one tomato per week. The tomatoes I used were grown in Pennsylvania, which has been hit but not as hard as areas of NY and CT.

Tomato Pie! (And I don't mean the Sicilian style of pizza often called a tomato pie.) I am not sure where the tomato pie comes from. Is it British? Is it Southern? My first awareness of tomato pie can be traced to southwestern Massachusetts and northwestern CT. A few years ago when my parents were planning to build a house they briefly hired an architect who lived in CT. He mentioned the tomato pie at a tea shop in CT. My mom and I went to that tea shop and as memory serves we had some tasty tomato pie but it is overshadowed in my memory by a delicious rhubarb dessert. Following that tomato pie experience, my parents and I had lunch at the architect's house. We were served a tomato pie. I don't remember either of those pies well enough to know if what I made last night was similar or not. But what I concocted was so yummy we only have one little piece left (and we didn't have any guests for dinner)!

Recipe from Simply Recipes:

1 pie shell (I used the store brand refrigerated prepared shell.)

3 tomatoes

1/2 to a whole onion (I used a Vidalia)

1/4C basil leaves, chopped

1 1/2-2C grated cheese (I used sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack)

3/4C mayonnaise

1t hot sauce

pepper

I pre-baked my pie shell at 350 for 8 minutes. It didn't work out so well as it collapsed down the sides and I had to pull the edges back up to hold the filling. The recipe says if you make a homemade shell to freeze it before baking, maybe I should have done that even with the store bought shell. The recipe calls for 1/2 a raw onion but mentions that you could caramelize it. I can't pass up a caramelized onion so I sliced the whole onion up in half rings and put them in a pan at high heat with 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 butter.

Once the onions had browned I piled them up in the center of the pan, lowered the heat, and let them cook. Meanwhile, I halved the tomatoes and squeezed out some of the moisture. I then roughly chopped the tomatoes. I piled all the basil leaves up together, rolled them up, and sliced to make thin strips of basil. In a bowl, I combined the cheese, mayo, hot sauce (I used Louisiana), and pepper. The recipe says it should be the consistency of a gooey snow ball, which is a lovely description but I am not quite sure what it means. Mine looked like shredded cheese coated in mayo.

After reconstructing my pie shell, I spread the onions across the bottom, layered the tomatoes on top, and sprinkled the chopped basil on top. Then I spread the cheese mixture across the top. I baked this at 350 for about 35 minutes. The recipe says to bake for 25 to 45 minutes. At 25 minutes my pie looked almost done but at 35 minutes it was bubbling in many places around the edge and the topping was getting nicely browned. We let it cool and dove right in. Yum!