Fried green tomatoes

CONCORD, N.H. — The first time I made fried green tomatoes I was, of course, living in Scotland. Where else to try such an archetypal food from the American South?

OK, so it wasn't the best introduction to fried green tomatoes. I can't even recall whether the tomatoes I used actually were green. Scotland isn't known for its fine selection of produce, and whatever the color, they weren't good.

I was young and impressionable and had just finished reading "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe," a novel by Fannie Flagg. Merits of the plot aside, I was taken by the book's description of its namesake dish.

Handily, a section of recipes was included at the back of the book. I was inspired enough to bundle up and drag my housemate into the frigid Scottish winter in search of the relatively simple ingredients — corn meal, salt, pepper, bacon fat and — duh! — green tomatoes.

The corn meal, salt and pepper were easy to come by. We skipped the bacon fat in favor of vegetable oil to appease my vegetarian sensibilities. But green tomatoes? We ended up with something approximating yellow.

We headed back to our rudimentary kitchen and did our best to follow the recipe. I'm still confident we did a good job — it was the recipe that failed us. Really.

It was a simple process: Cut the tomatoes into thick slices, dredge them in a mixture of cornmeal, salt and pepper, then pan-fry them on both sides until crisp.

The result should have been crispy tomatoes, lightly browned, juicy yet still firm, tart, yet a bit sweet and with a hint of vinegar. The result we got was a sloppy, mealy mess, mostly because the cornmeal wouldn't stick to the tomatoes.

We never made them again. In fact, I'm pretty certain we went to a pub for a pint to wash away the flavor.

That was 12 years ago. My culinary skills have come a long way since my university days. Maybe it really was my fault. Surely I screwed it up. So I turned back to the same recipe in Flagg's novel and gave it another go. This time with real green tomatoes.

It seemed to make a difference, though not enough to keep me happy.

To me, fried food should have a thorough coating. But with nothing to make it adhere to the tomato, much of the cornmeal still fell off into an unappetizing blob that soon was smoking in the oil and setting off the smoke alarm.

So much for fried green tomatoes. Or at least, so much for Flagg's version of them.

On a whim, I started researching recipes, looking for a version using that all-important culinary glue, eggs. Most did not, the authors sticking to the same traditional formula Flagg follows.