I found heirloom tomatoes at my grocery store! So exciting! Why?... because... they're funny looking! They remind me of pumpkins. Chris educated me last night on the science of heirlooms. They're non-hybrid, which means they're open-pollinated (I'll let Wikipedia explain that one).
The dark one is a Cherokee purple from what I can tell. I'm guessing the other two are German red strawberries. Different varieties have distinct flavours.
There's only a couple of things to do with heirloom tomatoes. The most obvious one is a Caprese salad (which Chris calls "crazy" salad), so that's what I made.
Ina Garten was telling me just the other day (well, her cook book was) about how a Caprese salad can be boring or fabulous depending on how you use the ingredients. She suggested using a whole bunch of different types of heirloom tomatoes. There were only two kinds at the grocery store, so I used what I could find. She also recommended lots of sea salt and freshly-cracked pepper, so I obliged. I used lots of nice spicy basil from my Aerogarden, which gave it real zing. Recipes for Caprese salad generally call for fresh mozzarella. In my haste at the grocery store, I grabbed a ball of mozzarella, but not the soft, pure white kind. I'm not sure this was a bad thing. This firmer cheese had a bit more presence than the fresh mozza I've used in previous Caprese salads; I really liked it. I finished the salad off with some extra virgin olive oil and a generous splash of balsamic vinegar.
Voila!
Chris and I both really enjoyed this salad on its own for dinner. Maybe because we had muffins as an after-work snack about an hour earlier... Anyway, it was delicious. When you see heirloom tomatoes in the grocery store or farmers market, try them out.
Pairs nicely with a glass of chardonnay.
0 comments:
Post a Comment