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To try Dave's recipe for roasted Creole tomatoes with bacon and bacon sauce, click here.
New Orleans is the kind of city that likes titles. A Daiquiri Shop is not just a Daiquiri Shop; it is a Jazz Daiquiri Shop. A PCS Wireless and Paging Shop is a Jazz PCS Wireless and Paging Shop. An auto glass shop is a Jazz Auto Glass Shop, where I think they take a loose, improvisational attitude towards car maintenance, maybe replacing your windshield with a bunch of daiquiris if that's where the vibe takes them.
"Creole" is another title that makes frequent appearances, so the last time I drove the 1600 miles to the Crescent City—my enthusiasm dampened by the fact that we had rent a great hole in our earth from which was furiously spewing the very poison that we must pursue to the ends of the earth to fuel our empire, but, well, you know—I was initially wary of the many "Creole Tomatoes" signs I saw popping up at farmstands outside of the city.
But there were enough signs popping up that they warranted my attention, and because this was tomato season in the North and therefore probably some weird, alien season that may also produce tomatoes in the South, I decided to pick some up.
As it turned out, these guys had more going on than a marketing gimmick. Creole tomatoes seemed to be the tomato of choice in the area, and for good reason. Mine were swirled with yellow and had a firm texture and a sweet flavor, with hints of what I imagined to be shellfish. But I was more than likely projecting.
They were also six bucks for like 16 of them.
When I got them back to the house I was staying at in uptown New Orleans, I did what any self-respecting blogger would do and began Googling. What I got was a bacon-oriented recipe that at first seemed like a way to pretend you weren't eating tomatoes but turned out to be a strong compliment to tomatoes more than capable of holding their own against another powerful flavor.
What follows is an amalgam of several websites and a book in my friend's house, modified to fit my circumstances. This recipe could also be used to make otherwise lackluster fruit taste more like bacon.
Recipe: Creole Tomatoes With Bacon and Bacon Sauce
Related Atlantic recipes:
Bacon and Tomato Macaroni
Tomato Bacon Canapés
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