10 July 2009

Caprese salad

I don't get "food fads". If something is good, it's good, whether it's new or old. If something is bad, making it novel doesn't help. In our home, tasting good is a pretty huge priority, so we're huge fans of all the fun heirloom tomatoes that you can get in southern California farmer's markets.

This preparation seems to have gone out of favour in recent years, but we still serve good tomatoes this way whenever they're available. It's simple and fresh. Bright and yummy. And it's a speedy appetizer that we can put together when we're spending more time putting together the main course.

Caprese salad

Caprese salad takes advantage of the fresh flavours of fresh food:
fresh tomatoes, sliced (our favourite variety is green zebra, but those aren't ready from the garden yet - these are some other heirloom variety)
fresh basil leaves (we keep these in the garden)
fresh mozzarella (which is basically the Italian version of chenna)
extra-virgin olive oil
fleur de sel
fresh black pepper
Layer the tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and black pepper over the salad. Serve. When you pick it up to eat it, make sure you get a slice of tomato, basil and mozzarella each time you pick up a slice.

Enjoy.

3 comments:

Dr. Ricky said...

Definitely this is the time to break out the good extra virgin olive oil. The GOOD stuff. Black pepper must be freshly cracked.

And god sakes, people, no balsamic vinegar! Certainly not that industriale grade stuff.

Indirect Heat said...

Hmmm... I've never had it with vinegar before. Would add to the rough acidic edge of the tomatoes, wouldn't be very nice...

On the flip side, I notice in this picture that I think I used kosher salt in this photo, and not fleur de sel. I generally prefer the fleur de sel here, because the size of the crystals allow it to dissolve a bit in your mouth, giving the bigger blast of salt. Either way, big crystals are ideal here.

Sherri Murphy said...

Love it! Thanks!

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