Fried Green Tomatoes with Paprika

I never had friend green tomatoes before, and couldn’t really understand what the excitement was all about. Give me a ripe tomato, preferably warm from the sun, and I’ll devour it raw, like an apple! I have also never raised tomato plants before now, and I’ve been amazed at the two gigantic green tomatoes that didn’t seem to want to turn red! The little cherry tomatoes were orange-ing up nicely, and some little four-legged critters were stealing some of the medium sized green tomatoes, so I decided to rescue the large green ones before they could be bitten by squirrel teeth and left to rot on the ground!

I combined several recipes I found on-line with modifications for health goals. Of course I was glad to find one recipe listing paprika as a spice! I used whole wheat flower as follows:

1 plate for dipping the raw tomato slices into plain flour

1 plate with an egg, beaten with milk for the second dip

1 plate with about 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup corn meal, ¼ teaspoons of salt, pepper, and paprika (I ended up adding more paprika, salt, and pepper, but don’t think it was ½ a teaspoon of each total) for the third dip.

 Way less than an inch of oil in the pan, still tasted great.

I tried the first one after it was barely cool enough to bite into, and it was super! 

Then I got to thinking that it was slightly like eggplant parmesan. That got me thinking about mixing flavors like cheese, tomato, basil, etc. Then I had a crazy idea: why not try it with slices of mango? I like my fried green tomatoes that way.

Have you ever prepared fried green tomatoes with garlic or onion? I’d like to try that, but don’t want to overpower the delicate flavor of the tomato.