tomato and mozzarella salad
(omnivore)

recipe by mb

just the recipe

what I was looking for

Come this time of year, when you're finally able to find good tomatoes in the stores, they are all I want to eat.

what I made

I made my favorite tomato dish, caprese salad, but used the recipe for tricolor tomato salad with fresh mozzarella from Sunset Books's Quick Cooking for Two (Sunset Books, 2000, pages 26-27) as a source of new inspiration.

chit-chat

See, for me the caprese salad (tomato and mozzarella) is the ultimate tomato dish. In my mind there is only one food pairing better than tomatoes and mozzarella (chocolate and raspberries, if you're curious), so these two should always walk hand in hand. Last summer I became completely obsessed with caprese salad and ate one every single day. Now that summer is returning I am excited to explore my caprese salads again.

I am generally a strange sort of purist about my caprese. I like it to contain tomatoes, mozzarella, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and torn-up bread. Nothing more.

But when I saw the recipe in Quick Cooking for Two I decided I had to try it. The addition of basil to the salad isn't unusual, but I liked the idea of putting anchovies in as well. Seems like that would be an excellent flavor combination.

Of course, the recipe from Quick Cooking for Two had to be changed a fair bit. Their recipe involves blanching the basil and then pureeing it in the blender with the olive oil and then straining it. Why not just use the leaves as opposed to going through all that trouble? That's what I decided to do.

They also wanted the tomatoes and mozzarella to be sliced into rounds, but I know from experience that this means you'll then have to cut them up while you're eating. I decided to skip the middleman and cut them into chunks to start off with.

These are the little changes that make a recipe INFINITELY easier.

grades for my version

healthy	B	Mozzarella is high in fat, no two ways about it. But everything else in this recipe is damn good for you.
fast	A	Some cutting and some stirring and that's it!
easy	A+++	This is a recipe that the absolute novice cook could make for a dinner party with no worries and everyone would be completely impressed.
cheap	B	Tomatoes are cheap. Good mozzarella is not, unfortunately.
delicious	A (I need to say it again) A	I love it. Oh goodness gracious is it ever delicious.

yield

A full lunch for one person or a good-sized side dish for two.

equipment

   a knife
   a medium bowl
   a small bowl

cut these

ingredients	Sunset	mb	why?
tomatoes	3 tomatoes	2 tomatoes	easier [1]
fresh mozzarella	4 oz.	4 oz.	no change
basil leaves	¼ cup	4 leaves	tastier [2]
Notes
[1]	As per the usual when I cook, I only had two tomatoes, so I used both of them. Would have been much harder to go out and buy another one, right?
[2]	Basil has a very strong taste (one which I adore) but I didn't want it overpowering the taste of everything else, so I went a little lighter than the book suggests.

      Core and cube the tomatoes and put them into the medium bowl. Then cube the mozzarella and put it into the medium bowl. Slice the basil leaves thinly and toss them in the medium bowl as well. Stir everything.

stir these

ingredients	Sunset	mb	why?
olive oil	2 Tablespoons	1 Tablespoon	tastier [1]
balsamic vinegar	---	2 Tablespoons	tastier [2]
anchovies	6 fillets	2 teaspoons anchovy paste	easier [3]
salt	to taste	---	tastier [4]
black pepper	to taste	to taste	no change
Notes
[1]	I could also have given "weight" as my reason for changing this, but the truth is that I changed it because 2 whole Tablespoons of olive oil would have made the recipe too oily for my tastes.
[2]	I see no reason to make this salad without balsamic, but that's just me. I love the sour stuff.
[3]	I happened to have anchovy paste in my fridge but no whole anchovies on hand, so I used what I had!
[4]	Using the anchovy paste meant that their saltiness was more widespread, so I didn't feel the need to add any extra salt to the dish.

   Stir all the above ingredients in a small bowl, thoroughly. Then pour the contents of the small bowl over the tomato and mozzarella mixture and stir once more.

Best served with crusty bread to sop up the remaining juices while sitting in the warm sun.

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