Tomato pie isn't exactly a widely spread dish. It's mostly relegated to a few pockets in the northeastern US, especially here in upstate New York. With that in mind, I couldn't blame you for any misconceptions about the dish. It isn't a "pie" in the traditional sense. If you're picturing a round crust filled with sliced tomatos akin to apple pie, you'd be mistaken. It is actually closer to a pizza.
Although that isn't exactly an accurate description either, because although similar, they hold some key differences. For one, pizza is delicious. Tomato pie is far from. When I was a kid, and we would go to parties and stuff, my parents would make me plates of food and say, "here, Adam, do you want some pizza?" I would of course say yes, expecting a piping hot piece of saucy, cheesy goodness. Imagine my disappointment when I would be rewarded with a square of this trophy of a food. Then I would force as much down my throat as I could, probably holding my nose as I did so, secretly wondering why my parents would bestow upon me such a harsh lie.
Tomato pie is a perversion of pizza. It's like pizza's retarded cousin. It's pizza with down syndrome. You know how superheroes always have their messed up counterparts? Not an evil clone, necessarily, but a sort of messed up clone? Superman has Bizzaro, the Powerpuff Girls have Bunny, Spider-Man had the nineties clones that nobody cared about? Well tomato pie is right along the same vein. Tomato pie is to pizza as Bizzaro is the Superman. It's Bizzaropizza. That's four z's. Use that next time you play Scrabble.
Allow me to explain why. For starters, it's served cold. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily. Probably 20-30% of the pizza I've eaten in my life has been cold. But when the composition of this masterpiece (sarcasm) is already pretty gut wrenching, being cold just makes it worse. Imagine cleaning up animal puke that's been sitting around for a while. Mushy, putrid, and now cold, too.
At the base of the pie, you have a big ol' slab of bread. That alone should be a turn-off. That is not the proper way to describe any kind of dough product. If your dough product comes in a slab, something is wrong. Stones come in slabs. Wood could come in a slab. But nothing edible should ever come as a slab. Except maybe meat. You know, like a nice thick steak? But not a baked dough product. If "slab" is an accurate term describe your bread, then I think it's safe to say that you have too much bread. In tomato pie, it isn't even good bread. It's dense and chewy, like a mushy crouton.
On top of that, we have the sauce. And to be honest, I'm not even sure if "sauce" is the best way to describe it. You see, the beauty of tomato sauce is that although tomato is the base, it is usually made with enough spices and seasonings that it doesn't even taste like tomato, but a sweet or savory combination that rocks your pallet like the food version of a rock band. This is good news for those who aren't keen on the native flavor of the tomato, like myself. Unfortunately, you don't get that grace in tomato pie.
The so called sauce is a thin layer of paste. It has none of the markings of an actual sauce, but more like a red, tomato-flavored peanut butter. Maybe its because the dish is served cold, but at least any cold sauch I've ever had is still liquid. The sauce on a tomato pie is, like I said, a paste. Like somebody got a can of tomato past from the grocery store and, instead of turning it into a sauce, just scooped it up and spread it on.
Now, most pizza lovers will tell you that most important part is the cheese. Which is one more field where tomato pie fails. On tomato pie, you get a sprinkling of grated cheese. I'm not sure what kind, but it's remarkably similar to the parmesan that you get in the plastic cylinder and pour on your spaghetti. That stuff is a garnish. You put it on the top of something else to add to it. On a pizza, or in this case, a pizza-like substance, a powder sprinkled on top is hardly a replacement for a layer of gooey mozzarella. The cheese is the most important part of the pizza, but the tomato pie throws that out the window, instead giving us nothing to offset the brick of bread and red film that we get.
Tomato pie is an amalgamation of everything that a pizza should not be. I think it came about when somebody made a bad pizza, left it out to get cold because nobody wanted it, then passed it up as a newfound pizza derivative. And they bought it. It's kind of a popular party food here in upstate New York, but I don't take it too well. If you want to try a delicious delicacy native to the region, go get yourself a half-moon cookie.
Now that's a food. A half-moon cookie is a cake-like, disc-shaped cookie slathered on the top with fudge frosting on half and buttercream on the other. And that is the important part: the frosting. The color is where the desert takes its name, but if it doesn't have the proper frosting combo, then its just a cheap imitation. I got some so called half-moons from a grocery store one time. The "frosting" but more like a candy crust, dark on one half and white on the other, but with no flavor variation. Those weren't real half-moon. Those were to half-moons as tomato pie is to pizza.
So I've voiced my opinion on tomato pie, but is it really that bad? Am I exaggerating? After all, it wouldn't be so popular if it was really that terrible. Let's try a little experiment. Go get some bread. Really thick, dense bread, maybe Italian or French. Put it in the freezer, then take it out and spread some raw tomato paste on top like butter on toast. Sprinkle some parmesan or romano on top (just a little) then take a big bite.
Like it? If so, then great. You have something similar to tomato pie and enjoy it. But I don't. As for me, I'll stick with regular pizza. With it's edible dough, mouth watering sauce, and gooey, chewy, greasy, delicious mozzarella cheese. Yum, mozzarella cheese. Now THAT's something that should come in a slab.
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