"I don't like tomato pie." Matt has said those exact words to me every summer since about 2012. He said them again Saturday afternoon while I was slicing tomatoes at the island. At 6:40 that evening he cut himself a second piece, ate it standing over the pan with his fingers, and said, "Okay. This one."
So here is this one.
Where the tomatoes came from
We came home from our week in Tyler with half a bushel of peaches on the van floor and a cardboard flat of tomatoes from a stand outside Jacksonville, at about $2.50 a pound. That's less than I pay for pale grocery store tomatoes in January, and these were the real thing: heavy, lopsided, split a little at the shoulders. Our own raised beds quit right around the Fourth, the way they do every year once the nights stop dropping below 75. By Thursday the flat on the counter had that sweet smell that means you have about two days left, and five people can only eat so many tomato sandwiches.
Tomato pie is what an East Texas kitchen does with that smell. It's savory: a baked crust, thick slices of tomato, green onion and basil, and a cheese topping that browns on top. Debbie makes a beautiful one every July. Matt has been politely eating around it for decades.
Why he hated it
This year I finally asked for specifics. The pie that ruined it for him was at a church supper in Tyler when he was fifteen: a soggy crust, a topping that tasted sweet, and what he describes as "a puddle of warm tomato water." That's the classic failure, and it's a fixable one. Tomatoes are mostly water. If they go into the crust raw and wet, that water has nowhere to go but down. Nearly every step below is about getting it out.
The other problem is July. We don't run the oven at dinnertime from late June on, because the kitchen heats up like a pizza box. So I blind baked the crust at 7 in the morning while the house was still cool, and the pie itself baked outside on Matt's pellet grill, next to the chicken thighs he was smoking for supper anyway.
The pie
One 9-inch pie. It fed the five of us next to a pan of smoked chicken thighs, with one slice left over for my lunch.
- 1 refrigerated pie crust (half of an Aldi two-pack)
- About 2 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, four big ones
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3 green onions, sliced thin
- A big handful of basil from the backyard, torn
- 6 ounces sharp cheddar, grated from a block (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan, plenty of black pepper and a pinch of garlic powder
- Blind bake the crust: line it with foil, fill it with dried beans and bake at 400 for 15 minutes, then 5 more without the foil. Let it cool. This is the step people skip, and it's the step that matters most.
- Slice the tomatoes 1/2 inch thick, lay them on a rack over a sheet pan, salt both sides and leave them for 45 minutes. Then press each slice between paper towels. The amount of water that comes out is a little alarming.
- Scatter a small handful of the cheddar over the bottom of the crust. It melts into a layer that keeps the juice out.
- Layer the tomatoes, green onions and basil, two layers deep, with black pepper on each layer.
- Stir the rest of the cheddar with the mozzarella, mayonnaise, Parmesan and garlic powder, and spread it over the top all the way to the crust.
- Bake at 375 for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is browned in spots. Rest it at least 30 minutes before cutting. An hour is better, and it's very good at room temperature.
Matt's grill was already at 375 for the last stretch of the chicken, so the pie went on the upper rack at 5:15 and came off at 5:50. It picked up a faint whiff of smoke, which I suspect did some of the convincing.
My miss: the pellet grill runs hotter at the back, near the firepot, and I didn't turn the pie. The back edge of the crust went from golden to very dark. Matt claimed the dark part was his favorite, but next time I'll rotate it halfway through and put a ring of foil around the edge.
Who ate what
Wyatt had two slices before anyone else had finished one. Eli lifted the cheese topping off his slice in one piece, ate it like a cracker and left the tomatoes looking exposed on his plate. Rosie ate the crust edges and three basil leaves, which she called "the salad." Matt, as noted, had seconds, and then asked whether there were enough tomatoes left for another one on Wednesday. There were.
Receipt check: the pie came to $11.17 (tomatoes $6.25, cheeses $2.82, crust $1.25, mayo, green onions and spices $0.85), about $2.23 a slice for five. With $6.36 of chicken thighs, Saturday dinner was $17.53.
Matt texted a photo of the empty pan to his mother. Debbie wrote back within a minute: "I've been telling you that for twenty years."
