And so, as spring ripens into summer, the Parsnip Gnocchi bids us all a fond farewell and we welcome Tomato and Toasted Coconut Spaetzle with Fried Green Tomatoes and Yellow Tomato Sauce.

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An unholy mash-up of German and Southern cooking, this is one of the few dishes I’ve ever made that wound up so many miles away from my initial intentions. Coconut and tomato is one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations and since it’s summer I knew tomatoes had to get on my menu. This started out as a tomato and spinach saag paneer, but that really wasn’t working out so well, and then it slowly veered towards a tomato gnocchi. That failed like a BP oil rig, and Jesus and I were left once again staring into a pot of murky water with bits of broken gnocchi bobbing on the surface and suddenly I thought, “Spaetzle!”

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It’s hard to make tomatoes the center of a dish, usually they’re turned into a sauce, or you get tomato and mozzarella which is really boring, or they’re served raw. I’m also very slow to get new dishes on the menu and I knew I needed to work with something hardier than a plump, ripe Beefsteak Tomato and the answer was clear: green tomatoes. They’re heartier and less delicate than ripe tomatoes, which is exactly what I needed. And green tomatoes usually come fried, so I toasted grated coconut and then breaded slabs of green tomato with them and fried them.

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For the sauce, I wanted something that was aromatic and had a deep flavor, but I also didn’t want to just throw some coconut into a sauce. The solution is to toast pieces of coconut and then steep them for hours in a yellow tomato sauce before pulling them out.  There’s a jicama and preserved lemon salad to give contrast and texture, and there’s also mache, also known as lamb’s lettuce, tucked up under the tomatoes for crunch.

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For a dish that started out with me banging my head against the wall and trying to make tomato gnocchi and tomato paneer, I think it turned out pretty well. Some of the sweetest things happen when Germany meets the South, like Tomato and Toasted Coconut Spaetzle, or like  Truck Stop, the German country band!

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