from PM’s CC Vol II. I’m usually not the hugest fan of cooked tomatoes, preferring them raw. PM’s stuffed tomatoes are pretty delicious, I must say: they’re filled with a meaty, shrimpy stuffing where a flickering of water chestnut adds a hint of crunch.
釀 niang4 — brew
番茄 fan1qie2 — tomato
PM’s recipe calls for 8 small tomatoes; I used 4 large, round, fairly hard tomatoes. She says to blanch them in the first step, but doesn’t say how long. Two minutes with my big tomatoes was not long enough; I think 5 minutes might do the trick.
Once the tomatoes are hollowed out and stuffed, PM tells us to brown them, stuffing side down. This was fairly straightforward, and none of my tomatoes lost its cargo. Once the tomatoes are browned, they’re steamed with soy sauce and sugar. I added some of the juice from hollowing out the tomatoes as well.
I would have liked to use my rice cooker for the steaming step, but it was busy with other projects. Thus I went the old-fashioned way: large pan with little stand and some water, and plate of tomatoes carefully lowered onto the stand and the whole thing firmly lidded. It’s important to keep an eye on the water level and make sure it doesn’t run out, particularly if the lid isn’t that tight.
PM has a final step of making a sauce with the juice released during steaming (you can see in the photo that there’s quite a bit) + cornstarch paste, but I didn’t want to dirty another pan so I skipped that.
Time taken: 45 minutes
Difficulty level: not so bad! The hardest part was lowering the plate of tomatoes into the pan for steaming without getting sauce everywhere.
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