Really Simple Stuffed Broiled Tomatoes

If you want an easy side dish, it doesn't get much easier than this. Most stuffed tomatoes as a side dish are stuffed with bread crumbs. Since wheat isn't in my diet, I fooled around with a number of recipes to stuff tomatoes without bread crumbs. In the end, I discovered that simplicity was best. The better the tomato, the better this dish is going to taste. Outrageously expensive, but worth the money, are the tomatoes sold in the grocery store still on the vine. They have more of a fresh garden taste. Still, they are no comparison to home grown.

I personally don't grow tomatoes, however. As a kid, my family had a garden in the back yard and one of my chores was to pull off the tomato plant worms. Gag me with a spoon. Tomato worms are the exact same color as the tomato plant and are therefore camouflaged. You don't find them so much as stumble upon them. They're horrible looking and squishy. I hated them and because of that for years wouldn't eat tomatoes. I think my parents did this on purpose, knowing I wouldn't eat tomatoes after having to find and kill tomato worms, just to keep all those delicious home-grown tomatoes for themselves.

Ingredients
4-5 medium size vine ripened tomatoes
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese (fresh, not like the Kraft green can)
4-5 tsp olive oil
4-5 tbsp Italian seasonings (like, McCormick)
salt & pepper to taste
cooking spray (like, Pam)

The Recipe
Wash the tomato and slice off the top just beneath the stem. With a melon-baller, scoop out and discard about ¼ of the meat of the tomato to create a little “cup.”

In a mixing bowl, combine the Italian seasoning, salt, pepper and the cheese. Mix to combine. Fill the “cup” with shredded cheese and seasoning mixture. Drizzle a teaspoon of olive oil over the top part of the tomato and along the rim of the “cup.”

Pre-heat your oven's broiler. Place the tomatoes in a shallow roasting pan sprayed with cooking spray under the broiler about six inches or so from the heat. Broil until cheese is melted and tomato starts to brown a bit, about 3-5 minutes.

One variation on this is to take the tomato that you removed with the melon-baller, and saute it with fresh basil and a little garlic. Cook it down a bit to remove some of the liquid content. Remove it from the stove, add the freshly grated Parmesan cheese and Italian seasonings, and then stuff the tomato with this mixture. You'll used less cheese, which is perhaps why I like this variation the least. I'm a cheese hound.