Monday, August 15, 2011

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Stilton

I love Heirloom tomatoes.  I love plain, generic, run of the mill tomatoes.  I love tomatoes in every form.  Tomato sauce, tomato juice but mostly a tomato, raw, sliced, with just a touch of salt and pepper.

This is a dish that I have eaten at a few high end steakhouses lately.  At Craftsteak, various heirlooms with Stilton and microgreens.  At Burke, tomatoes too thinly sliced,covered in a thick balsamic syrup and way too much Stilton.  I tried to take the best from both dishes and make the perfect Heirloom Tomato Salad.

I started with several variety of tomatoes, sliced thick.  I generously added fresh ground salt and pepper.  I made a balsamic vinaigrette with brown sugar, balsamic, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.  I used restraint in the drizzling.  I then crumbled the yummy, salty bleu cheese over the top.  It was perfect.

After making this for lunch, I fantasized about it all day so I decided to make another for dinner.  I prepared it the same way.  Sliced tomatoes, S&P, balsamic......bleu cheese?...not in the refridgerator, not on the island.  We retraced our steps since lunch.  Neither of us remembered putting the Stilton away.  We frantically searched the fridge over and over.  Nothing.  There was only one conclusion.  Our two 3 1/2 year old pitbulls.  They ate the $20 per pound Stilton.  So, as to not waste the glorious tomatoes, I toasted some pine nuts, chiffonade of basil and scattered them over the tomatoes.  Eating it, I felt like I had not done the tomatoes justice.  Wasted.

So tonight, with 3 tomatoes left, Matt headed up to Whole Foods to grab some more bleu cheese.  I made another salad.  Not as perfect as the first but damn close.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Guys,

    I wrote this really nice comment but then didn't know what accounts we had for the confirmation screen so all is lost. Will try again this time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It worked! The pictures are great and so are native tomatoes in the summer! It's the ripening thing. Commercial tomatoes are picked green and complete their colorization during shipping, doesn't really promote great taste.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Please put up the celery salad recipe, there are lots of folks looking for it from the Bday party luncheon.

    ReplyDelete