[Smashy the Hammer] [An Aspiring Luddite]
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An aspiring Luddite
In a wired world.
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[Jeff Berry]
Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Tomato Oat Cobbler
22 December 2014
[Cobbler]

My lovely wife recently clipped a recipe for me from a magazine - the AARP magazine, I believe. It was Mark Bittman writing about "Summer Cobblers," and the one that caught her eye was for a tomato cobbler. The recipe itself is pretty good, and well worth tracking down. However, I can rarely leave well enough alone, and decided to adapt, alter, adulterate, and other verbs-beginning-with-a it.

I'd been messing about with a variety of oatcake recipes (and I use recipe here in the loosest possible sense), and this seemed like yet another place to use oats. The result is good, although to be honest, I don't know if I should call it a cobbler anymore. I use oats with an egg binder to make a fairly sturdy top. You could omit the egg, of course, and the result will be crumblier - I make oatcakes with and without egg and that textural change is the main difference. I've since made it with just egg whites, since I needed egg yolks for Flathonys. That works pretty well, too. [Lots of pictures]

Tomato Oat Cobbler (or Tomato Oatcake or Tomatoats)

Per serving:

Cut the tomatoes into smallish bits. Halved cherry tomatoes are about the right size. Put them in a bowl or ramekin, add a bit of olive oil, and toss. If you'd like, you could add some herbs - basil would be lovely, if you have some to hand.

Light beat the egg with the milk and more salt and pepper than you think you'll need. Add the oats and mix until you have a stiff batter-like consistency. The amount you need will vary a bit depending on your oats, the humidity, phase of the moon, and so on. It should be at least 1/2 cup and probably more. Oats just suck the liquid right up.

Spoon the batter on top of the tomatoes and spread it around. Pop it into a medium oven, 180C/350F or so, for twenty minutes. Check it, it should be browned a bit on top. Remove from the oven and eat carefully - the tomatoes are essentially little bombs of flavored water near the boiling point. Which is a good thing.


© 2014 Jeff Berry
The Aspiring Luddite