Savor the end of summer's best tomato harvest with this recipe for Cherry Tomato Salad.
They may be abundant today, but only five hundred years ago, tomatoes were a fruit that was found only in the Andes Mountains. Spanish explorers took tomatoes back for European approval, but tomatoes were not easily accepted by the population; regarded as suspicious fruits, tomatoes were thought to promote deviant behavior or to be plain poisonous to eat. A few centuries after their European debut, cooks in the city of Naples took another look at the fruit and began using the tomato in sauces for spaghetti. Their efforts would be passed down through the centuries until today, when we can hardly imagine spaghetti without tomato sauce.
A ripe, delicious tomato plucked straight from the vine has a unique taste--great when served as a grilled appetizer, cooked into a sauce, sliced for sandwiches or mixed into a simple salad. The following salad recipe, featuring a variety of cherry tomatoes and fresh basil, is a great way to put one of summer's best vegetables to use.
Cherry Tomato Salad
Serves 4
2 pints assorted heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 bunch fresh basil leaves
Extra-virgin olive oil
Red-wine vinegar
3 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Cut 3/4 of the tomatoes in half, and place in a bowl. Set whole tomatoes aside for garnishing.
2. Arrange the basil leaves on each of four plates. Top each plate with 1/4 of the cut tomatoes. Drizzle each serving with olive oil and red-wine vinegar. Garnish with the reserved whole tomatoes, the blue cheese, and thyme. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve.
