This is the best time of year to make Caprese salad. I have a farmers’ market a half-mile from my house and they have so many varieties of tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness right now. I always hate how the oil and vinegar in Caprese salad drips below the sliced tomatoes, so I make a chopped version that can be tossed to coat the tomatoes.
We make pestos pretty frequently, but that’s mostly because the herbs in our garden need to be trimmed occasionally. I made one the other day to dress some lamb. It always surprises me when people are impressed by homemade pesto. It literally takes two minutes to make.
Remember how I said I was trying to cook healthier dishes at home? This isn’t one of them.
Bruschetta is one of those recipes that many people really like to make, but few make really well. This past weekend, my wife and I had some great bruschetta at a restaurant in Hendersonville, NC. What made it great was the simplicity of the ingredients. It was just sliced baguette, crushed tomatoes, basil and soft mozzarella. It was nothing like the bruschetta you often get at restaurants. Those dishes are usually made with pizza sauce or canned “bruschetta spread.” This dish was made with freshly peeled and crushed tomatoes, and that made all the difference. I decided I wanted to recreate the dish at home, and the results came out great.
First, I prepped the tomatoes and peeled and halved a clove of garlic while my wife picked some fresh basil.
The wife and I are nuts for Insalata Caprese. We’ll make a large platter and munch on it for days. This time, we used the last of our green tomatoes to make an extra crispy version:
We served it with some sopressata. The fresh mozzarella will only get better as it soaks up more of the balsamic vinegar. We’ve made this dish with our homemade mozzarella before, but we just can’t seem to make cheese that tastes as creamy as the expensive stuff. I think it’s because the milk we buy isn’t very sweet. Does anyone have any experience with this?
We figured the best way to use our homemade mozzarella cheese was to make Margherita pizza. My wife decided to make pizza dough to keep with the ‘fresh’ theme. We used this pizza dough recipe. Here she is manually dissolving the yeast:
Getting your hands dirty is the key to good dough.
