Baked Green Tomato Herb Salad

On Monday night, I was excited to work on a new cooking project.  Olivia's Organics is sponsoring a Summer Harvest Recipe contest.  To enter, you need to submit a salad recipe that incorporates fresh seasonal ingredients.  The winner gets $500 and the recipe will be featured on their website!  I wanted to enter and I decided to make a Baked Green Tomato Herb Salad.

To start, I washed and sliced two beautiful green tomatoes from Siena Farms, which is where I get a lot of my favorite local ingredients.

I sliced the tomatoes into quarter to half-inch thick slices.

I wanted to make a healthier version of fried green tomatoes by baking them instead of frying them.  I try to make this easy substitution in a lot of my dishes, like my sweet potato chips or beet chips.  So I turned on my oven to 400 degrees.  While the oven was pre-heating, I put a sheet of aluminum foil (for easy clean-up) on a large baking tray and put that in the oven as well.  I remembered Chef Matt Barros telling us this past weekend how it is so important to make sure that your pan is hot to get a nice crispy texture.  I figured it wouldn't hurt with this dish either.

While the oven was pre-heating, I dipped each tomato slice into a 1/3 cup of fat-free milk, which is typically the only milk I will ever have in my kitchen.  To add a little heat, I added a few drops of Tabasco sauce to the milk and gave it a stir.

I then dredged the slice in a dry mixture consisting of 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of yellow cornmeal, and a few generous pinches of salt, black pepper, and cayenne.  I also added a pinch of sugar since the green tomatoes were tart and I wanted to add just a small touch of sweetness.

When the oven was ready, I took the sheet out, sprayed it with cooking spray, and placed the tomatoes on the tray.  I gave the tops of the tomatoes a quick spritz of the cooking spray as well (to help them brown) and placed the tray in the oven for about fifteen minutes.  After fifteen minutes, I took the tomatoes out, turned them over and gave it another twenty minutes.

While the tomatoes were baking, I prepared the rest of the ingredients for my salad.  I decided to use Olivia's Organic's herb salad because I wanted a nice slightly bitter flavor to contrast against the tart and sweet flavors of the green tomatoes.

I also crumbled up a few slices of this delightful local Capri goat cheese from Westfield Farm that I found at Whole Foods.  It was so creamy and tangy - I definitely took a few nibbles as I sliced it up.

I tossed a handful of the salad with some goat cheese, black pepper and salt.

I also added a nice simple homemade balsamic dressing that consisted of a few tablespoons each of white champagne balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

I also added a few pinches of salt, pepper, oregano, and crushed red pepper flakes and gave the dressing a quick stir.

I gave the salad a quick toss with the dressing and then topped it with my golden-brown crusty baked green tomatoes.  I didn't intend for a vegetarian meal that night but the green tomatoes were so huge that it seemed unnecessary to add meat to this dish.

I loved the flavor combination of the slightly bitter herb salad, tangy goat cheese, and slightly tart and sweet green tomatoes.  I liked the crispy texture of the fried green tomatoes and it went well with the fresh salad and creamy goat cheese. 

I was really happy with the results, especially since most of the ingredients were local!  Nothing screams summer to me like tomatoes and using green tomatoes was a nice twist.  I think this dish really represents some of summer's great seasonal ingredients!


What salad ingredients screams summertime for you?  
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