More buttermilk!

Prepare to endure a week of buttermilk, because that's about how long the buttermilk in my fridge will keep and I want to use it all. I could freeze it in ice cube trays and save it for later, but I don't want to. It's a buttermilk kind of week, m'kay?

Last night, I made stuffed tomatoes with, you guessed it, BUTTERMILK! I think they'd make a nice side dish for just about anything. Veal comes to mind. Here you go.

Buttermilk Stuffed Tomatoes

This recipe can be multiplied by as many tomatoes as you need. I made two, but you could make fifty, if you're having fifty people over for stuffed tomatoes or you need to use up a lot of buttermilk.

First, hollow out your tomatoes. Cut the top off, making a little bowl. Rinse out all the seeds. It's just fine to leave a little of the tomato meat. When they're as hollow as you can get them, turn them upside down on the edge of the sink, so any remaining liquid will drain.

In a bowl or cup with a spout, mix the following, multiplied by the number of tomatoes you want to stuff:

• 1 tablespoon crumbled Gorgonzola.
• 1 tablespoon buttermilk.
• 1/3 cup frozen spinach, thawed and pressed between towels to remove the liquid. You'll end up with less than 1/3 cup after pressing.
• 1 egg.
• A healthy shake of crushed red pepper.
• Salt and pepper to taste. And don't start screaming at me about tasting raw egg. If you buy your eggs fresh, from the person who gathered them, you'll be fine*.
  

Slice an onion. Find a slice that will work as a stand for each tomato, so they don't tip over while cooking. The onion also adds a little bit of flavor. My brilliant French mother-in-law taught me to use onions as a roasting rack for fish. No more gluey fish yuck. Hooray! Now I use them for everything. Save the rest of the onion; you can use it for soup another day. Or maybe an onion tart...with buttermilk...hmmm...

Put each tomato on an onion slice on a baking sheet and fill with the egg mixture. I told you to use a bowl or cup with a spout and I hope you did, because that makes this step a lot easier.

Cook at 375° for thirty minutes. Let them cool for ten or fifteen minutes while they set.

One thing I didn't add that would have been nice was something crunchy and salty on top. Down heah, we love to add bread crumbs (good), crushed Ritz Crackers (better) or potato chips (best!) to the top of any dish. I say go for it.

Namasté, y'all!

* I got over any squeamishness I had about raw eggs when O. was a toddler. I really wanted to take a shower (trust me, this is going somewhere) and I could not distract the over-socialized O. I hate being cold and it's unacceptable to me to have a toddler pulling back the curtain and creating a draft while Princess Me is trying to shower. I'm not proud of this (well, maybe a little), but I let him play in the fridge while I took my shower. It was the only thing that would occupy him for any length of time. He was a very careful child and could spend twenty minutes rearranging things on the shelves without making a mess. When I finished, I went to the kitchen to assess the damage. He had bitten the top off of a raw egg and was drinking it. Yum!