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Summer Heirloom Caprese Salad

Written By Brad English
Tuesday, 02 August 2011 Written Recipes

Colorful Heirloom Tomatoes

This is one of my favorite salads to make in one variation or another.  If I don’t have fresh mozzarella on hand, I’ll just make this as a tomato and basil salad with a little oil, balsamic and salt and pepper.  I am always happy with a tomato salad.   If you can’t get an heirloom tomato any quality tomato will work.  It’s a very flexible platform for pure goodness!

This salad can be a great lunch all by itself.  It’s refreshing and fulfilling.  It can also be a great dinner salad.  Or, as you will see in my next post, it can be a terrific topping for a pizza, or a sandwich for that matter.  I also like to add a roasted red pepper (I try to keep a jar of them around for such an occasion).

This is a fresh and easy salad that I did not invent, nor am I taking any credit for it.  I am simply pulling the best ingredients together that I have access to and tweaking them to make this great Italian concept my own.  It will change slightly every time you make it because this salad is all about the ingredients.  Each one of them, the tomato, the cheese, the basil, the seasoning, all stand out, but also blend together so well, in much the same way that the simple ingredients we often see on a great pizza work together.  In my mind, the caprese salad is to salads what the Margherita pizza is to pizzas.  They are pure representations of what they are (salad and pizza) and celebrate the individual ingredients as well as the gathering of them into a meal.

The simplest salad possible: drizzled with a good balsamic, olive oil, a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper

The Summer Heirloom Caprese Salad:

Heirloom Tomatoes
Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella
Fresh Basil
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Sea Salt
Pepper

–Slice an Heirloom Tomato into slices or wedges.
–Place a ball of buffalo mozzarella (or fresh cow’s milk mozzarella) over the tomato and break it open.
–Tear or snip with a scissors the basil leaves into strips, or cut them and lay over the top.
–Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the salad, to taste.
–Sprinkle a little sea salt and fresh ground pepper to finish.

Enjoy!

Comments

Erik Jacobs

Hi Brad,

Here at Wanderlust Pizza, we’ve been serving our “Crazy Caprese” all summer and it’s been received wonderfully.

We take grape tomatoes, sliced in half, added to fresh mozzarella “pearls, evoo, a chiffonade of fresh basil and salt and pepper. We then serve it atop a garlic parmigiano flatbread that we bake in our Forno Bravo oven (in an Airstream Trailer!)

A Caprese salad with your garlic bread built right in. Our customers love it!

Cheers!

peter

Sounds fabulous!!! Thanks Erik! Where do you guys operate out of (and in an Airstream, no less–can you send us some photos to info@pizzaquest.com ?) Must take forever to cut those grape tomatoes but just reading about it made me very hungry for them — keep up the great work!

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