Caprese Salad

I had to go talk with one of our managers, Shawn, at work. He had this enormous basket of tomatoes on his desk and told me he was trying to give them away. "Really?" Organic, too. I helped myself to a pound or two with Shawn encouraging me to take more. I didn't want to take more than we could eat, though. Shawn said his family planted 70 tomato vines this year. Wow!

We used some of the tomatoes to make these lovely caprese salads. They are simple to prepare and wonderful to eat. You need the freshest and very best ingredients. This includes vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese (the kind that comes packed in water), and fresh basil. We got the cheese from Costco and the basil from a pot on our back porch. A good quality olive oil and freshly ground pepper are the remaining ingredients.

To make the salad, simply slice the tomatoes and cheese, arrange them on the plates, drizzle olive oil over them, tear the basil leaves and sprinkle them on top, and finish it off with a few twists from the pepper mill.

Elly and I first had caprese salad in Fiesole near Florence, Italy.