Tomato Bacon Cups

Drove to Evarts Saturday. The drive is different in summer — the mountains are so green they look like they're trying to outdo each other, the hollows dark with shade, the creeks running full from the spring rains. I drove with the windows down past Berea and past London and into Harlan County where the road narrows and the mountains close in and the world gets smaller in a way that used to feel like a cage and now feels like a hug, if hugs were made of limestone and coal and a hundred years of people who never left.

Betty was in the garden. Eighty-two years old, on her knees in the dirt, pulling weeds from around her tomato plants like she was having a personal argument with each weed and winning. I told her to get up. She told me to hush. I helped her weed for an hour, on my knees beside her, my back howling, the two of us pulling weeds in silence the way we've done everything important in our lives — side by side, no commentary, the work speaking for itself.

She made fried corn for lunch. Cut it straight from the cob — Silver Queen, from her garden, the kernels fat and milk-white — and cooked it in butter in the cast iron until it caramelized and the sugars turned golden and the kitchen smelled like July in Harlan County, which is a smell I would pay any amount of money to bottle and can't because it exists only in the moment, in that kitchen, in the hands of an eighty-two-year-old woman who doesn't know she's preserving something irreplaceable every time she turns on the stove.

I wrote down the fried corn recipe while she napped after lunch. Sat at her kitchen table with my notebook and wrote: Silver Queen corn, cut from cob, scrape milk from cob with back of knife, melt butter in cast iron, add corn, salt, pepper, cook on medium until edges brown. Don't stir too often. Let it sit and caramelize. Betty's instruction, which she'd never phrase as an instruction: just let it alone, Craig. Let it get right on its own. I wrote that down too.

I came home with the fried corn recipe in my notebook, but I couldn’t stop thinking about those tomato plants — the ones Betty was arguing with on her knees when I pulled up, the ones she’ll tend until first frost without asking for help or thanks. She grows them the way she does everything: serious, quiet, certain they’ll come in right if she just doesn’t let them alone too long. These Tomato Bacon Cups aren’t her recipe, but they’re built from the same logic she used on that fried corn: start with something good from the garden, add a little heat and a little fat, and trust it to get right on its own.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 medium ripe tomatoes
6 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons green onion, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Salt to taste
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with foil or lightly grease a muffin tin.
Hollow the tomatoes. Slice the top off each tomato and use a small spoon to scoop out the seeds and pulp, leaving a 1/4-inch shell. Lightly salt the inside of each cup and set them upside down on a paper towel for 5 minutes to drain.
Mix the filling. In a medium bowl, combine the crumbled bacon, shredded cheddar, mayonnaise, green onion, garlic powder, and black pepper. Stir until fully combined.
Fill the cups. Pat the inside of each tomato dry, then spoon the filling evenly into each cup, mounding it slightly at the top.
Bake. Place filled tomatoes on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 18—20 minutes, until the filling is hot and lightly golden on top and the tomato skins have just begun to wrinkle at the edges.
Garnish and serve. Remove from the oven and let rest 3—5 minutes. Top with fresh parsley and serve warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Tomato Bacon Cups — From Betty’s Garden, With Both Hands in the Dirt