Sweet and Sour Tomatoes

I first made these sweet and sour tomatoes in April of 2011, right after finishing a huge chunk of my manuscript for my cookbook. In search of a light and easy side dish, I tried out this great recipe for a sweet and tangy tomato salad. A years later, it's still a warm-weather standby.

I've been perusing my cookbooks for ideas for easy side dishes to get me in the mood for warmer weather. Ideally, I could also snack on them when recipe-testing stir-fries, which I have been doing a lot of lately. Yesterday, while looking through Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking, I hit jackpot on one of the last few pages. It was a recipe for sweet and sour tomatoes, an incredibly easy salad-like side dish that also seemed chock-full of flavor. The ingredients? Tomatoes, onions, vinegar, sugar, salt, coconut aminos (my vegan take) or fish sauce (for the more traditional version). That's it. As far as I can tell, fish sauce is a fine ingredient that doesn't get used enough in salads outside Thai and Vietnamese cuisines.

I made a few big changes to the book's recipe, such as significantly reducing the amount of liquid, which seemed overwhelming for the number of tomatoes. I also substituted shallots for onions because of the slightly sweeter natural flavor, and used cider vinegar instead of malt vinegar for a fruitier flavor to the sauce. There was no mint in the original recipe, but it just seemed to fit. And wow, these tomatoes turned out so well, with such a great mellow balance of sweet and sour flavors, that wedge by wedge, they slowly disappeared before my chicken stir-fry was done.

I can't even wait to try it with the candy-like heirloom tomatoes that show up everywhere late summer. It'll be like an appetizer and dessert in one, and a perfect snack if I happen to be holed up in the apartment again, cooking and typing away.