Caprese Salad is just tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and olive oil, but it can go horribly wrong. Here are a few tricks I use to make mine beautiful and delicious. The first is never, ever do Caprese unless it’s tomato season.
Here are the others:
1. Buy a variety of sizes and colors of heirloom tomatoes. Don’t use hybrids. You won’t get the variety of flavors and textures.
2. Layer tomatoes in concentric colors and sizes, then scatter smaller ones on the top.
3. Tear mozzarella with your fingers, rather than cutting it. It makes for rougher pieces, which soak up the tomato juice, oil and salt better.
4. Be generous with the salt and pepper. Very generous.
5. Roll basil like a cigar, then cut into shreds. Sprinkle the shreds on top.
6. Put your thumb over the olive oil bottle and spray droplets all over the salad. Don’t let it pool.
Serve right away, and be sure to have bread to sop up the juices. This, folks, is summer!d
