Brown in the South: Green Tomato Pie Recipe

Think that green tomatoes are either an heirloom variety or destined to only be fried? They are more than that. If you’re into vegetable gardening or farming, your idea of a green tomato may be one like the Green Zebra or Cherokee Green tomato. If you’re keen on the American South, a green tomato is just a regular supermarket tomato but instead of being ripe red, it’s unripe green, with a tangy flavor and very firm texture.

I’ve pickled green tomatoes with lemongrass for a Viet-ish side dish and to slide into banh mi. In a South Asian cookbook on pickling, I counted seven (7) green tomato recipes. But a recent visit to Mississippi turned me on to green tomato pie. It was at Snackbar in Oxford, where Vishwesh “Vish” Bhatt has served as executive chef for many years. He is a kind, very talented chef who fluidly blends his South Asian heritage with his home in the American South. There is a strong Indo-American presence in the South to the extent that “Brown in the South” is a phrase that a group of South Asian chefs and restaurateur have coalesced over. Bhatt wrote his story and recipes in a refreshing cookbook titled, I Am From Here, released by W. W. Norton in 2022. That is where I found the recipe for Mr. Bunzendahl’s Green Tomato Pie, tucked into the tomato chapter (Bhatt organized the book by main ingredient). Mr. Bunzendahl was the father of a friend who shared the recipe. So should you add this to celebrate the bounty of what remains of tomato season? Heck yes.

Finding Home in Your Kitchen

Bhatt was born in India, in the state of Gujarat, to a mother who was a great, from-scratch home cook and a father who was a physicist. Bhatt was the youngest child in his family. He learned cooking from his mother, grocery shopping from his father. The family moved to America when he was eighteen years old, for his father’s teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin. Bhatt attended the University of Kentucky and then the University of Mississippi in Oxford where his parents had relocated for another teaching position. He attended culinary school in Miami, cooked in Denver and eventually found cooking opportunities that brought him back to Oxford, a place he proudly calls home.

Why Asian Immigrants are Not All the Same

My family’s refugee experience differs from Bhatt’s in that my family struggled economically when we arrived here in 1975. Bhatt admits that he has not experienced the struggles of many other immigrants. That’s not an apology, but rather an explanation for his easy adoption of different cuisines and cultures. If you move to a new country when you’re 18 years old, you’re nearly an adult and could be fixed in your ways. He was not and it’s evident in I Am From Here.

For instance, Bhatt’s cookbook includes many dishes based on his Indian heritage – his mother’s family recipe for Gujarati-styled charred eggplant and peanut masala-stuffed baby eggplant occupy space in the Eggplant chapter that also includes his take on Greek moussaka, which includes ajwain seeds, a spice in the Indian kitchen that imparts a cumin-caraway-fennel-like flavor. He mentions how talk of benne (sesame) seed oil in the South invokes his memories of fetching fresh pressed sesame oil in India for his grandmother. There are numerous connections between his upbringing with what he’s experienced in the South and he employs food and cooking to showcase that. “As long as I’ve lived in the South, I’ve felt at home at the table and in the kitchen,” Bhatt writes. After tasting the green tomato pie at Snackbar, I wanted to replicate it and add it to my repertoire, which also employs fruit in different stages of ripeness (green papaya and green mango salads!).

What are green tomatoes and how to select them

They are merely unripe tomatoes picked when they are rock hard. I have a hard time getting them in Northern California but there is one older farmer who sells them. Make sure that the tomatoes are unripe ones, not green varieties in the ripening process. In the South, grocery stores sell green tomatoes and they are extremely solid. Cut one open and it’s as dense as Styrofoam. Even after consulting with the farmer, I admit that my West Coast green tomatoes (below at the right bottom) were closer to turning yellow or orange so my filling was not as solid as what was served at Snackbar. Nevertheless, the filling was delicious because of how Bhatt seasons it.

Green Tomato Pie Spicing Options

Bhatt employed a moderate amount of cinnamon and clove plus a heavy dose of lemon peel. The spices compliment the green tomato without overpowering its natural unripe, tang. The lemon peel accentuated green tomato’s edge. Cinnamon and clove are Asian spices but I experimented with Chinese five-spice (make your own with this recipe) plus extra cinnamon. The flavor was wonderful. You could use garam masala. This is not an apple pie; there’s no need to over spice things. You want green tomato to express itself, not be an apple substitute.

Vish’s Pie Crust or Storebought?

The green tomato pie recipe in I’m From Here includes a note about swapping supermarket pie crust for homemade. I’ve used Pillsbury refrigerated pie dough sold in boxed packages in Vietnamese Food Any Day for banh quai vac (Viet-style empanadas on page 57). The dough is a handy substitute.  However, if you want a quintessential southern pie experience, make this green tomato pie with Vish’s pie crust recipe. I’ve included my weight measurements for the flour to help you close in on success. For the shortening, I used a vegetable shortening by Spectrum Organics (½ cup weighed 96 grams). Blending two kinds of flour and butter with shortening plus using milk and vinegar makes for a just tender crust. Of course, if you have a favorite pie dough recipe, use it!

Pie Pan Sizing

What is a standard 9-inch pie pan? That technical tidbit gets me every time I make pie, which isn’t often so I’m always fearing that I’ll trip up. So, to settle things for myself and for you, I made this video tip. Please remove any ad blocker that may prevent your viewing the video. When prompted to STAY or NEXT, choose “STAY” to keep watching. And if that doesn’t help, refresh your browser and or consider clearing out your browser history.

Leftover green tomato pie is delicious. I warmed a slice on a plate in the oven (use a toaster oven, if you like).

Print Recipe

Mr. Bunzendahl’s Green Tomato Pie

Tangy-sweet and mildly spiced, this lovely southern American pie recipe has been slightly adapted from Vish Bhatt’s cookbook, I Am from Here (W. W. Norton, 2022). Dice the tomato so they are the size of large shelled green peas.

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Asian American

Keyword: green tomato, pie

Servings: 8

Ingredients

Vish Bhatt’s Pie crust

• 1 ½ cups / 213g all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ cups / 170g cake flour
• ½ teaspoon find sea salt
• 8 tablespoons one stick unsalted butter, diced and chilled
• ½ cup vegetable shortening or lard in rough pieces, chilled
• ½ cup cold whole milk
• 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

For filling and serving

• 5 cups diced, unripe green tomatoes (from 2 pounds)
• 1 ⅓ cups + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons tapioca flour or cornstarch
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon cloves
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
• Vanilla ice cream for serving (optional)

Instructions

• To make the pie crust: Combine the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse to mix. (For pie dough, a food processor is more effective than a stand mixer. The blade of the food processor does a better job of mixing the ingredients, and it is helpful to be able to see into the side of the food processor’s clear bowl.) Add the butter and shortening. Pulse until the mixture resembles coarsely, ground cornmeal, and no large pieces of butter or shortening remain visible.
• Combined the milk and vinegar in a small bowl or measuring cup. Remove the lid of the food processor and sprinkle the milk mixture evenly over the top of the flour. Replace the lid and pulse just until the dough begins to form a ball. Add more cold milk if needed.
• Very lightly dust a work surface with flour and scrape all the dough bits out onto it. Gather and press into a ball then divide the dough in half (about 358 g each). Press each half into a 6-inch disk, wrap each separately in plastic wrap, and refrigerate the dough until firm at least 1 hour, or overnight.
• To make the filling: Toss the green tomatoes with 1 tablespoon of sugar and the salt in a large bowl. Transfer to a colander and set aside over a large bowl or in the sink for 30 minutes to drain.
• Preheat the oven to 375°F.
• Roll one pie crust between two sheets of parchment or wax paper to a 12-inch circle about ⅛ inch thick. Fit the circle into a standard 9-inch pie pan. Fold and crimp the edge with the tines of a fork. Line the crust with a piece of aluminum foil and fill the pie with weights or dried beans. (This will help prevent shrinkage and puffing while the crust bakes.) Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, remove the foil and pie weights, then set aside.
• As pie bottom parbakes, roll out the other dough disk into a 10 to 11-inch circle. (The top crust can be slightly smaller in diameter and slightly thicker than the bottom crust, since it does not have to cover as much surface area.) To later easily transfer the dough, place it on a piece of wax paper, plastic wrap, or parchment.
• Combine the remaining 1 ⅓ cups of sugar, tapioca, flour, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon zest and juice in a large bowl and mix well; the mixture will look like wet sand. Shake the colander of diced tomato over the sink to drain the excess moisture from the tomatoes, then add them to the sugar-spice mixture. Toss gently to combine. Spoon the tomato filling into the parbaked bottom crust mounding it in the center. Dot the top with the butter.
• If your bottom dough doesn’t seem sticky, brush some of the filling juices in the pie on the edge to serve as “glue”. Drape the unbaked rolled-out dough over the pie and seal the edges by pressing together with a fork all the way around or crimping with your fingers. Cut four or five vents in the top crust with the tip of a sharp knife. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes, until the top crust is a deep golden brown, and you can see the filling bubbling through the vents.
• Let the pie cool on a rack completely before cutting. The rest time allows the filling to set, but it will not become completely firm. I promise, the juice is so good, you will not complain. Slice the pie at room temperature and serve ideally with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Notes

Dough tip: The dough can be frozen for several weeks, thaw in the refrigerator and use chilled, but not frozen. I use the rolling pin to beat the dough disk so it flattens out to about 8 inches before I actually roll the dough. My rationale is that it minimally works the gluten in the dough.

Instead of the spices suggested above, use Chinese five spice or garam masala. Before adding the drained tomato, taste the sugar-spice mixture and add big pinches of cinnamon or clove, if needed.

If you want sparkly finish, brush the top of the pie with about 1 tablespoon milk and sprinkle on 1 to 2 teaspoons coarse sugar, such as sparkling, demerara or turbinado.