“Three tomatoes are walking down the street:  a Poppa tomato, a Momma tomato, & a little baby tomato.  Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, & smooshes him…..& says, “Catch up!”  -The radiant Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino‘s classic 1994 film Pulp Fiction

I doubt that anyone bothering to visit my little internet abode is ignorant of the bliss of a proper Insalata Caprese.  Most of us, at some point, have consumed some sort of variation on this theme.  A post like this has little to do with instruction or technique, and nothing at all to do with an attempt at re-inventing the wheel.  Nature has already invented this particular wheel in a billion different ways.  All that happened here, really, is that I got a big fat craving (due, in part, to the wonderful smell of flowering tomato vines in my garden…..), and I needed to stand on my proverbial internet mountaintop and scream “My dearest foodie children, if you have not had this classic salad lately, go forth, procure some early summer tomatoes, and be happy.”  This post is nothing more than a celebration of a tried-and-true summertime staple.

Tomatoes, basil, and fresh buffalo mozzarella just go together.  On pizza, in pasta, on sandwiches, in salads, in sauces…..You’re even supposed to plant tomatoes and basil together in the garden, for Pete’s sake.  Italy got it so right with this flavor combination that Tomato Red, Mozzarella White, and Basil Green are the colors of their freakin’ flag.  (Accident?  I think not.)  This is not the place to fuss with ingredients too much.  Nothing in this salad is cooked, so the best thing to do is use the highest quality of each component that you can possibly find.  Let Mother Nature (and some rudimentary knife skills, perhaps) do the rest.

Where tomatoes are concerned, the sky is the limit here, as long as they’re gorgeous.  Though I’d personally avoid this dish altogether in the winter months, I will always go for vine tomatoes or grape tomatoes when summer tomato season is not exactly in full swing, and will defer to the experts at the farmer’s market when it is.  Trendy or not, I’m a sucker for in-season heirloom varieties.  They come in the most beautiful colors, shapes, sizes, flavors…..they are big-girl candy.  The tomatoes I used for this post were from a gorgeous assortment of small grape and cherry tomatoes, which work beautifully if you like a sweeter flavor and want a small plate with a lot of variety on it.  And I can’t discuss tomatoes without mentioning to never, ever put them in the refrigerator.  The refrigerator will absolutely destroy the flavor of a fresh tomato, so it’s very important to keep them at room temperature.

With regard to fresh basil, I will say that I would never in a million years use the dried version if fresh is even remotely available.  (Some herbs and spices dry well…..basil is not one of them, and there’s absolutely no comparison.)  There is, perhaps, not a smell I love more on Planet Earth than the smell of fresh basil.  This summer marks maybe the 4th or 5th time that I’ve taken advantage of the NYC summer season to grow my own, and I must relate the fact that natural sunlight really, truly does something to the flavor.  Not only that, but it’s one of the easiest plants in the whole world to grow, both indoors and out…..both in the ground or in a pot.  It loves the Sun, it loves water, and it loves regular haircuts.  The end.  That’s pretty much all there is to it.

There is even some breathing room where the cheese is concerned.  For my money, I’ll always have a preference for fresh, unsalted buffalo mozzarella that’s packed in brine.  This way you get a very soft, pillow-y, moist cheese, and you can control the salt content yourself.  Cow’s milk mozzarella just doesn’t taste the same as buffalo does, and mozzarella that’s just dry-wrapped in plastic has a firmer texture that I just don’t like as much as the brine-packed kind.  But if you’re feeling experimental and want to try something a little different, try using ciliegine, which are smaller, bite-sized rounds of mozzarella.  These are especially wonderful for presentation with smaller tomatoes because the size is similar.  And for a more complex, deeper flavor, there’s always smoked mozzarella, which, though delicious, just wouldn’t be my personal preference here.

And finally, we’re down to olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Since nothing here is cooked, this is the place to use the best of the best.  Opt for a really great extra virgin olive oil from a first pressing, if possible.  Look for a beautiful green tint, and trust your taste buds.  Save the cheap stuff for cooking.  Salt-wise, I used two kinds in my salad:  kosher salt for general seasoning purposes, and flaked sea salt to finish it.  And as always, it’s gotta be freshly ground black pepper straight from the pepper mill.

It’s pointless to give any kind of amounts or measures where this dish is concerned, and I probably wouldn’t give much credence to a Caprese recipe that did.  Amounts and measures are not what this salad is about.  This salad is about gorgeous ingredients kept simple.  Oh, and it’s about summer.  Sunny, warm, smiley, delicious, yummy summer.

Ingredients:

Assortment of beautiful summer tomatoes of any kind, washed, dried well, and sliced as desired

Fresh basil leaves, washed and dried well, left whole

Buffalo mozzarella packed in brine, sliced as desired

High-quality extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Flaked sea salt, for finishing (NOTE:  My favorite is, of course, Maldon brand.)

Instructions:

1.  Arrange tomato slices, basil leaves, and mozzarella slices as desired on a plate or platter.  Drizzle everything with olive oil, and season to taste with kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper.  Finish with a light sprinkling of flaked sea salt.  Serve at room temperature.

Yield: This is entirely arbitrary, and easily adjustable from 1 serving to 100.