Cooks from America’s Low Country — the area around Charleston, South Carolina — are well-known for their love of shrimp and delicate blue crab. And when that combination of seafood comes together in a vine-ripened summer tomato, good things are bound to happen.
One of the many things that Southern cooks share is a love for filling hollowed-out vegetables with a blend of chopped pulp, stale bread crumbs, herbs and seasonings and, on occasion, some kind of chopped meat, poultry or seafood.
Here in the South, we’ll stuff just about anything that can be cut with a knife and hollowed out, but particularly tomatoes because they make such a good, natural cup for holding chicken, crab, shrimp and fish salads.
(READ MORE: Dive into fresh, ripe tomatoes with these recipes)
Food historians will tell you that in years past, formal dinners — something that seems to have disappeared to a large degree — were more elaborate productions with menus that often featured fancy dishes to round out the corners of the tables or perhaps served at luncheons. Today, though, we’ve found them hearty enough, particularly when stuffed with proteins, to serve as a main dish for supper.