Vegetarian Recipe: Fried Green Tomatoes with Grapes

Every week on the Good Food Blog we celebrate Meatless Monday by sharing a vegetarian recipe from our archives.

Chef-author Faith Heller Willinger of Adventures of an Italian Food Lover first shared this recipe from Carlo and Delfina Cioni’s Ristorante Da Delfina in Florence for Fried Green Tomatoes with Grapes on August 25, 2007.

Keep reading for the full recipe…

Fried Green Tomatoes with Grapes

Serves 4 to 6

3/4 pound grapes (Delfina uses wine grapes; use the best dark grapes you can get)

8 firm green tomatoes

Soft wheat flour (Italian “00” or White Lily flour), for coating slices

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

8 garlic cloves, mashed

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons tomato sauce

Squeeze the juice from half the grapes (Faith processes them, then mashes them in a strainer to get around 6 tablespoons of juice). Cut the remaining grapes in half (not necessary for smaller wine grapes). Cut the tomatoes into 1/2-inch slices (cut a slim slice off the top and bottom of the tomato so that all slices will have two wet surfaces) and remove the seeds (easy with a tomato knife or a grapefruit spoon). Heavily flour the slices.

Heat the extra virgin in a large nonreactive skillet, brown the garlic and remove. Add the tomato slices and fry until lightly browned on both sides. Season with salt and pepper, add the grape juice and the tomato sauce, and cook for a minute or two, then add the grapes and serve.