This stuffed tomatoes recipe makes Cambodian tomates farcies, a culinary remnant of the French colonial period when Cambodia was a French protectorate and part of French Indochina, along with Vietnam and Laos. A delicious starter or side dish when cooked in the home, in Cambodia tomates farcies are sold on the street and in markets, and as ready-to-cook meals in supermarkets.
Our stuffed tomatoes recipe makes one of our best tomato recipes. It’s my take on a much-loved Cambodian classic of French origin called tomates farcies, a dish of plump sweet red tomatoes stuffed with savoury minced pork, garlic, onions, and mushrooms that are pan-roasted and/or oven-baked until the flavours meld together.
I have to confess to being surprised on our first trip to Cambodia over a decade ago when I spotted a tray of tomates farcies sold at a stall selling pre-prepared dishes at Battambang’s night market. Locals whizzed up to the stall on their motorbikes and pointed to trays of Cambodian specialties to purchase take-away for their dinner that night.
Amongst the platters of salted and fried fish, deep trays of vegetable-packed sour soups, spicy stews and fragrant curries, and bowls of pork and prahok (fermented fish) terrine, was a tray of charred tomates farcies, their wrinkled skins glistening with oil. And this French-Cambodian dish was just as popular as the Khmer sour soups and Cambodian curries.
But before I tell you more about this stuffed tomatoes recipe for tomates farcies, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by buying us a coffee. We’ll put that coffee money toward cooking ingredients for recipe testing.
Another way to support the site is by making a small donation to our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon or purchase something on Amazon, such as these James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.
And lastly, you could use our links to book accommodation, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, buy travel insurance, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Again, we may earn a small commission but you won’t pay extra. Lastly, you could also shop our Grantourismo store for gifts for foodies, including fun reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s photography. Now let me tell you more about this stuffed tomatoes recipe for tomates farcies.
Stuffed Tomatoes Recipe for Cambodian Tomates Farcies, a Culinary Remnant from French Indochina
This stuffed tomatoes recipe for tomates farcies will make you my take – I’ve made just a few tweaks – on that much-loved Cambodian dish I first spotted outside Battambang’s night market all those years ago. Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see tomates farcies there.
Just a few hundred metres away were handsome yellow-hued French colonial-era buildings with blue-grey shutters, and earlier that day our guide had taken us to a village to visit one of the oldest houses in Battambang where the matriarch of the family gave a guided tour of her home in French.
Cambodia was a French protectorate from 1863 to 1953. While Cambodia formed part of French Indochina, with Laos and Vietnam, the relationship between Cambodia and the colonisers differed to that between the French and its neighbours.
France arrived in Saigon in 1858 and it was only after what historian David Chandler in his Short History of Cambodia called a “bloody war of conquest” in 1893 that they controlled all of the Vietnamese territories from the Chinese border in the north to the border with Cambodia in the south.
Cambodia, on the other hand, had sadly become a tributary state of its neighbours, who had not only been meddling in its affairs for centuries, but sacked its capital – the Siamese (Thais) burned Phnom Penh to the ground in 1772, and invaded Cambodia in 1811, 1833 and the 1840s, while the Vietnamese had been expanding south for centuries, absorbing first the Cham empire of Central Vietnam, then Khmer lands in what’s now Southern Vietnam.
The Cambodian Prince Norodom asked the French for protection from the tiger (Siam/Thailand) and crocodile (Vietnam), signing a “treaty of friendship, commerce and French protection”, starting off on a different relationship, even if it would soon sour.
The French culinary influence is still felt in Cambodian cuisine. For instance, the bakery next to our apartment building bakes countless baskets of baguettes each day. Cambodians love to dip into their chicken curry, served buttered with barbecued skewers, and use to make num pang, the name of the bread itself as well as the baguette sandwich made with it.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see stuffed tomatoes sold at the market all those years ago. After all, stuffed tomatoes are found all over the world. They were popular in Australia in the 1970s when my mother made them from the French cookbook, Larousse Gastronomique.
After moving to the Middle East in the late 90s we spotted them in restaurants and markets everywhere from Egypt to Lebanon and Turkey. They’re an ancient Mediterranean specialty coming in countless forms, but typically stuffed with some kind of minced meat and maybe rice.
What would perhaps be surprising to some is that the traditional Cambodian stuffed tomatoes recipe , which you’ll find in Narin Seng Jameson’s cookbook Cooking the Cambodian Way, the Intertwined Story of Cooking and Culture in Cambodia, does not contain rice, and that’s because Cambodians eat the dish with steamed rice, along with perhaps a soup, a relish or dip such as prahok ktiss, and maybe some grilled meats or fish.
These days here in Cambodia, tomates farcies are sold uncooked, the hollowed-out tomatoes stuffed with the raw pork mince mixture, covered in plastic on Styrofoam trays, in the refrigerated ready-made section at local supermarkets. You’ll find them amongst covered trays of pre-prepared ingredients for sour soups and dishes such as stuffed bitter gourd.
The Cambodian stuffed tomatoes recipe is a classic that rarely remains unchanged. It will make you the same tomates farcies sold at food stalls on the streets and in markets, and these days, in the refrigerated sections of supermarkets. My stuffed tomatoes recipe is what’s called ‘same same but different’ here in Southeast Asia. Just a few tips to making my stuffed tomatoes recipe.
Tips to Making this Stuffed Tomatoes Recipe for Cambodian Tomates Farcies
As usual, just a few tips to making my stuffed tomatoes recipe. There are three main differences between the classic Cambodian stuffed tomatoes recipe for tomates farcies and my stuffed tomatoes recipe.
Firstly, in the classic recipe, the pork mixture is fairly plain – onion, garlic, ground pork, chopped mushrooms, an egg, salt and pepper. By contrast, my stuffed tomatoes recipe makes a more savoury pork filling with more spices and a kick of chilli. I also omit the egg, which brings me to the second difference.
I fry the pork mixture in our round flat-bottomed wok until the pork is just-cooked before adding fresh coriander and stuffing the tomatoes with the cooked mixture. In the classic Cambodian stuffed tomatoes recipe like most recipes, the pork in the savoury mixture is raw when it’s stuffed into the hollowed-out tomatoes.
You can make it this way if you like, simply by frying the onion, garlic, mushrooms, and seasoning, then combining those with the raw pork mince before filling the tomatoes. This then means you will have to cook the tomatoes for longer.
Some Cambodians first pan-fry them for about 15 minutes and then roast them in an oven for 30 minutes. Not all Cambodians, of course, as most do not have ovens, so they’ll only fry them, which brings me to the final difference between the classic Cambodian tomates farcies recipe and my stuffed tomatoes recipe.
We really do not like tomatoes cooked to the extent that the skin is wrinkled, even charred, and the flesh is soft, and the tomatoes are falling apart. Terence and I can’t understand why someone would want to do that to beautiful sweet ripe tomatoes, so we prefer to cook the tomatoes for less time, so that they’re cooked but still firm and juicy.
That’s partly why I fry the pork mixture. The other reason is because we think it simply tastes more delicious and we’re not fans of the texture of the raw filling cooked in the tomatoes. But each to their own. This dish is so versatile that you can make these to the classic stuffed tomatoes recipe if you choose. Enjoy!
Stuffed Tomatoes Recipe for Cambodian Tomates Farcies
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 large onion - finely chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
- 200 g pork mince
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 80 g brown mushrooms - finely chopped
- 6 vine-ripened tomatoes - large (approx. 90-100 g)
- 2 tbsp coriander - fresh, leaves only
- Coriander leaves to garnish
Instructions
- Turn the oven onto 150°C (300°F).
- In a flat-bottom wok, heat the vegetable oil and fry the onion on low-medium heat, stirring occasionally, until soft and transparent, then add the garlic and fry until fragrant.
- Add the pork mince to the onion and garlic, mashing to break down the clumps of mince, stir to combine well, then turn the heat up, stirring frequently.
- Season the pork, onion and garlic mixture with salt, white pepper, ground coriander, and chilli flakes, stir to combine thoroughly, and continue to fry until just-cooked.
- Turn the heat down and push the pork mixture to the side of the wok closest to the handle, transfer the chopped mushrooms to the other side of the wok.
- Use the handle to tilt the wok just enough so the pork juices flow down to the mushrooms, but the pork mixture stays put, then use a wooden spoon to continually stir and fry the finely chopped mushrooms in the seasoned juices.
- When the mushroom are cooked and just starting to brown, set the wok down, combine the mushrooms with the pork mixture, and turn off the heat.
- Slice the tops off the tomatoes then carefully scoop out the pulp and seeds so that you don’t break the skin, and transfer the tomatoes to a greased baking pan.
- Stir the fresh coriander leaves into the pork mixture and use a teaspoon to stuff the mixture into each of the tomatoes, pushing it down to fill the tomato, then pop the tomato tops onto the tomatoes, and roast in the oven for 30 minutes.
- Garnish with more fresh coriander leaves before serving.
Nutrition
Please do let us know if you make this stuffed tomatoes recipe for tomates farcie as we’d love to know how they turned out for you and we’d love to know if you prefer the classic recipe or our tweaked version.
