The New Caprese Salad
- Prep Time: 5
- Cook Time: 5
- Total Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
- Red Wine Vinegar
- Salt & pepper
- Basil or purple basil
- Goat Cheese
- Heirloom Tomatoes
Instructions
From Bon Appetit
- “First step? Pick up the ripest, sweetest heirloom tomatoes you can find and your cheese of the week (goat cheese or burrata). Cut those tomatoes into one-inch wedges. The other ingredients you’ll need are red wine vinegar, salt, extra virgin olive oil, and basil. Martinez prefers purple basil here for color and flavor. It’s a touch spicier, its flavor a cross between Italian green and Thai basil, so it imparts warm hints of cinnamon and cardamom.
- Get the grill going. Martinez suggests getting the grill super hot and the grates extremely clean, because any food remnants on the grates will stick to your delicate heirloom tomatoes. To clean the grill thoroughly, take a brush to the grates while it’s ripping hot. Then brush the grates with some vegetable oil. This way, you won’t have to grease up your tomatoes before throwing them on; greasing the food (rather than the grates) often results in that unappetizing burned oil flavor.
- Once everything’s clean, greased up, and ready to go, grill the tomato wedges for about two minutes on each side. The grill will bring out more of the tomatoes’ natural sugar and add dimension with those gorgeous char marks. But don’t overdo it: You want to taste the tomatoes, and don’t want to mess with them too much.
- Take them off the grill and serve with cold wedges of burrata or chunks of goat cheese and some basil leaves. The contrast between the warm, sweet, and slightly charred tomatoes and the cold cheese is exactly what you didn’t know caprese’s always been missing. Add no more than a couple teaspoons of red wine vinegar, a light drizzle of olive oil, and a touch of Maldon salt and fresh cracked pepper. That’s it. Oh, and one last tip? Save room for seconds. Trust us: You’ll want them.”
Notes
- Not Included in Large Kitchen Box: Red Wine Vinegar, Salt & Pepper