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| Behold! A tasty tower of tantalizing tomato! |
First, the delicious stacked heirloom tomato Caprese salad.
Most of the dishes I make, though tasty and creative in their own right, are reasonably straightforward -- I don't generally do postmodernist deconstruction of recipes as you might find in a small plates/microdining gastropub (or whatever the kids are calling 'em these days). However, after a long bicycle ride out at Antietam battlefield with Jim and the BMC, we stopped en route home at a Mennonite farm stand which had a truly beautiful array of mottled, firm, heirloom tomatoes* for sale.
I was having Jim, Lynn, and Jen over for dinner that evening, and with a handful of remaining basil and a pound of fresh mozzarella, I decided I needed these tomatoes. What ensued was a small eureka (Greek for "explosions of flavor" or something) moment: I would construct side Caprese salads like SO.
Recipe:
After removing the cap and cutting off enough of the bottom of each tomato to create a level base, I sliced the heirlooms into broad, half inch coins. Between each layer of tomato I placed a slightly thinner slice of fresh mozzarella, a basil leaf, and a dab (maybe a half teaspoon) of dressing (equal parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a dash of ground pepper). I wish I'd taken some pictures of the interior of these tomatoes -- they were really quite beautiful -- but I was rushing around in full-tilt chef/host mode. Bummer.
Ok, eating them might have been a challenge, but who cares?
This was edible art. I stand by it.
*Heirloom tomatoes as a category include those tomato breeds that predate the start of extensive, intentional hybridization in the 1950s. Though less shelf-stable and sometimes less resilient to pests, heirlooms are beautiful and often quite strongly-flavored compared to the more readily-available hybrids you're liekly to see in stores.
IN OTHER NEWS
The Russians love Hungry Sam. A couple nights ago I woke up to a blog stats page FULL of hits from Russia. Now, I have, apparently, a number of foreign readers (or at least, stumble uponers), but this was a significant number of pageviews. When I clicked on the referral link, this is what I saw:
I mean, maybe folks out in the old Former Soviet Union were just wondering what I was doing during Hurricane Irene. Or maybe I inadvertently stumbled across the right combination of words for a high PageRank in Russian Google. Who knows?