Starting in the early summer of 2011, my visits to jail became regular. Prior to then, I was occasionally called upon to teach the inmates some knife skills, but a new grant arrived that provided enough funds so that each week there could be one class for the men and one for the women. And I started working both classes each week.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning, my alarm goes off at 6:30am and I stumble—I never bother with my glasses until after my shower—to the bathroom. I usually have enough time to fit in a quick espresso and a glance at my email before heading to my car for the 7-mile slog through commute traffic to the Transitional Facility of the San Mateo County Jail. The facility is actually part of the women’s jail and separately houses men and women convicted of non-violent, mostly substance abuse, crimes who do not require any special medical care other than prescription medicines.

There is a separate, paid chef-instructor for each of the classes. I volunteer for both of them. The class size has been as high as fifteen, but the women’s class is usually smaller since they have a smaller population to select from. The inmates volunteer for the classes, and participation is considered a privilege. Considering that most of their meals consist of bologna or peanut butter on white bread sandwiches, it may also be the only decent meal they get that week. Guards may wander through some time during the class, but usually we are left on our own with the inmates. Since I see many of them for a number of weeks, I’ve always made an effort to get to know each by name. Unless they volunteer the information, I never ask what deed caused them to come into my acquaintance. When their time is up, I always say how I never want to see them again, at least not under the current circumstances.

Each morning starts with myself and the chef-instructor discussing what dishes to make and what items need to be cut and in what order. The Tuesday instructor never works from written recipes, and the Wednesday instructor, at my urging, is doing it less. As the class progresses, other dishes will be made and there be mid-course corrections. It’s all very free form, and always dependent on what ingredients happen to be in the kitchen. The instructors will provide some of the ingredients, but others come from the jail garden or just seem to turn up. Ingredients that come from places like the food bank may be partially rotten and require special creativity. It’s lots of fun. I’ve seen a group of twelve men, many with no previous cooking experience, turn out 20 dishes in two to three hours including fresh-baked bread and half a dozen different types of cookies. Given free rein, every dish they prepare would either be loaded with sugar or chili peppers, so they definitely are not cooking without some supervision.

For me, there’s always the challenge of finding some soon-to-be-off ingredient in the reach-in or on the shelf and having to figure what to do with it. There was the time I walked into find a case of bananas with mostly black skins. We peeled them and mashed the flesh until it was a smooth puree. This was cooked with a little cornstarch slurry to make a warm banana pudding. The pudding tasted real fine.

Sometimes it’s a matter of turning left when I’m told to go right. This was the case when my group was asked to cook some not-yet-ripe pears to accompany some grilled pork chops. Rather than do the requested sugar and cinnamon treatment, my guys peeled, cored, and wedged the pears and then cooked them in butter with a hefty dose of packaged Cajun seasoning. The pears tasted real fine.

There was the time where I found six super colossal-size red onions that were rotten in the middle and a brown bag of mushroom slices that were a bit black and soft. The onions were carefully separated into good and bad portions. The good portions were sliced and cooked on the flat-top griddle along with the mushrooms and a little vegetable stock base. This became the topping⁄sauce for the day’s grilled meat.

Then there was the time I walked in and was handed a dozen very large green tomatoes. These weren’t a green variety of tomato, these were very unripe, red tomatoes. The request was for fried green tomatoes. Having never made and only once eaten fried green tomatoes, I asked the chef if he had any particular preparation in mind. He suggested breading them with cornmeal and panko and then deep-frying. Of course there was no panko, so we substituted hand-crushed corn flakes.

The assignment provided an opportunity to set up a breading line and teach the principles of breading. So three half-hotel pans were set up, one with seasoned flour, one with beaten eggs, and one with corn meal mixed with corn flakes. The guys were taught how to do the breading without contaminating each of the ingredients. They were also taught the reasons for breading, my favorite being that it is a way for a shop or restaurant to sell a less-expensive ingredient for more money. Instead of deep frying the thick slices, I opted for shallow frying and one of the guys proceeded to cook-off two full-sized sheet pans of tomato slices. The result was quite tasty, and I ate quite a few slices. I also saw in these huge slices, the possibility for a small amuse-bouche.

I knew from the start that I wanted to use green cherry tomatoes so they could be cooked whole, but I noticed that at the jail, the breading did not stick to the skin of the tomatoes. Some special technique would be required here. I knew that there was a vendor at my local farmers market that always had a large selection of cherry tomatoes of various stages of ripeness. The following Saturday morning, I headed over there and bought a handful of green, pear-shaped cherry tomatoes. The next afternoon I decided to try my luck, which turned out to be poor. I knew that for the breading to stick, I would have to peel the tomatoes. It turned out that most were too soft for the peeler to get a bite. Those that were hard enough, barely resembled their former shape after peeling. I managed to get three tomatoes that I would try to bread. I had peeled all but a few millimeters near the stem end so a little nubbin of skin would remain to stick out of the breading.

I inserted a long wooden skewer in this end. The skewer was long enough so I could dip the tomato directly in a box of cornstarch. I gently shook the excess off and removed any attached to the skin with my finger. I dipped the cornstarch covered surface at an angle into the beaten egg and twirled the skewer to coat the tomato. I coated the surface with panko in a similar manner. I noticed that the coating was a bit thin so I repeated the egg and panko for a second time.

I heated fresh canola oil in a small saucepan. When it finally was hot, I fried the tomatoes two at a time, holding the skewers so the uncoated area wasn’t under the oil. When the panko was golden, I gave the tomatoes a quick drain on some paper towels and tasted the first one. Damn, it tasted good. I gave the second one to my wife. She approved. I forget who got the last one. The taste was good, but peeling was still a problem.

The following week, I bought some more tomatoes and on my walk home, had an idea: why not use hot water like I use to peel other tomatoes? I carefully made a very shallow cut with a small paring knife around the neck of each tomato and inserted a skewer through the stem end. Using the skewers, I held four at a time in the boiling water until the surfaces began to crack. The time varied greatly from tomato to tomato, but eventually they all made it into the ice water for cooling. Most of the peels came off easily, leaving the familiar tomato shape and size.

This time I was preparing these for guests, so the tomatoes on their skewers were just placed in the refrigerator until later. When it came time to cook the tomatoes, the method was the same as before except I put some cornstarch in a bowl instead of using it in the box. I was able to fry four tomatoes at a time holding the skewers spread with my fingers.

I had thrown around a number of ideas for sauces. In the end, I settled for an impromptu New Orleans-style rémoulade sauce that I made from Best Foods mayonnaise, Heinz chili sauce, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Valentina salsa picante, and a dab of Heinz sweet pickle relish. Everyone liked the results, and I got a nice picture for this blog.

When I was editing the picture the following day, I noticed that the best picture was of a yellow-looking tomato, not a green one. So the next Saturday, it was off to the farmers market again to buy the greenest tomatoes I could find. That night I made a new batch of fried greener tomatoes, recreated the sauce, and took a new picture. I also found that a X-Acto knife fitted with a No. 11 blade worked better than a paring knife to score the tomato skin.

I showed the picture to the chef-instructor from the class where the idea had originated, and he declared my efforts too hoity-toity. Oh well. The inmate who had cooked-off the tomatoes at the jail thought my tomatoes were cool and asked when he’d get a chance to duplicate them.