ZAM’s New Year’s Progressive Dinner

When I signed up for this party, there were only 3 spaces left.. all salad.  I sighed.  Being vegetarian, “but we have salad” is often the discouraging postscript to finding out there’s nothing else at a party that I can eat.

But… there are salads that consist of a few limp lettuce leaves and discouraged pink chunks of rubber calling themselves “tomatoes,” and then .. there’s the real deal.

I still make this dish when I can find decent tomatoes at the farmer’s market, even in winter – our part of Ontario is Canada’s “deep south” and has a lot of greenhouse produce (and mushroom caves, but that’s another recipe.) Fresh basil is a must—and the pot I brought in last fall is struggling along on my seedling shelf. It’s trying to bloom, poor thing, so I may need to start a few new basil seedlings to keep the garden going on life-support until summer returns.

John Hansen, from Walking Wounded, would make this salad—he probably learned it from his massage therapist, who knows a bit about nutrition. Living on a disability pension before he married Kevin, John had to make the most of his grocery budget, and I imagine he helped his elderly neighbor with her garden and received some fresh produce in return. But he isn’t the sort of cook to try ambitious recipes, so this lovely dish of summer flavor would be just the sort of thing to accompany a bowl of spaghetti tossed in olive oil and grated cheese.

Summer In A Bowl

Ingredients: Ripe tomatoes, basil leaves, a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper. The better your ingredients, the better the result. Fresh-grown tomatoes and basil are best, of course.

This is my wife’s favorite summer salad, and one of mine, too.   No precise measurements because that’s up to you. Ripe cherry tomatoes – heritage varieties are best, grown for taste rather than durability—are prettiest, but fresh tomatoes of any size will work. Get the ripest, freshest, un-factoriest fruit you can find.

Slice your tomatoes (cherries in half, other sorts as you like) into individual salad dishes. I use largish dessert bowls so there’s room for the juices to mix it up.

Sprinkle a little salt on the tomatoes to draw out the juice, and while you’re doing that, take a few basil leaves – however many you can work with comfortably (3 is good, for a single dish) and chiffonade them—roll them up in a tube and slice them very thin. This doesn’t have to be perfect but it does spread the flavor better than using whole leaves.

Sprinkle the shredded leaves on the tomato slices. Drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil over them – don’t skip this step, even if you only use a half-teaspoon of oil—the oil helps make the nutrients in the tomatoes easier for your body to assimilate. Then pour the balsamic vinegar over them – a teaspoon will do, but if you like more, that’s fine too.  If you’re feeling especially artistic, you can pinch off the top bud of your basil stalk and place it in the center—don’t worry, it’s like pinching back any plant, that will encourage branching off.

If you like pepper, grind a little black or mixed pepper over the top, let it sit for a minute or two so the flavors blend, and – enjoy with your meal, or just a slice of warm garlic bread (in the summer, when the tomatoes are ripe, you may not want anything more). If you drink the juice that’s left, I don’t think anyone would blame you!

You can add a bit of crumbled feta or blue cheese, or toasted walnut pieces.. but you really don’t need them.