The first home-grown tomato of the season!!
Ain't it pretty? I thought so. And I felt that the first tomato of the season needed to be eaten in style, you know? Unfortunately there was only one ripe one (the others are slowly getting their 'red' on) so it wasn't going to be the main meal. But I figured, you can't go wrong with the (highly unoriginal but v delicious) salad caprese, right? Buffalo mozzerella (which I contemplated making myself, but there was no citric acid at the supermarket...I plan to persevere on this front though, because I can, quite remarkably, buy unhomogenized buffalo milk!), basil from the garden and our own beautiful (Latah variety) tomato. A drizzle of Simone's family's olive oil and some sea salt was all it otherwise needed.
But, as I said, it needed something more to make it a meal. That's where things may have gotten a little out of hand...
What we ended up with was something of a feast. Salad caprese, a raw marinated zucchini salad with mint, grilled zucchini with olive oil and garlic, beans stewed in sweet tomatoes, fresh foccacia with potato and rosemary, fresh foccacia with parmesan and red onion, smoked salmon, meats, olives and wine! What we really needed were 3 or 4 good friends to share the feast with, but we made do and it was delicious. The lad noted [he seems to increasingly find himself cast here in the role of food critic...intense pressure, poor lad!] that the tomato tasted like the ones his Grandma used to grow and give him in tomato sandwiches when he was a kid. He was right - it was a nostalgic tomato taste that only home-grown fruit can give. And the good news is that the other 4 tomato plants are covered in hard, green, ugly fruit - just waiting for some sunshine to make their cheeks all rosey and ripe.
And so we wait too....
Ain't it pretty? I thought so. And I felt that the first tomato of the season needed to be eaten in style, you know? Unfortunately there was only one ripe one (the others are slowly getting their 'red' on) so it wasn't going to be the main meal. But I figured, you can't go wrong with the (highly unoriginal but v delicious) salad caprese, right? Buffalo mozzerella (which I contemplated making myself, but there was no citric acid at the supermarket...I plan to persevere on this front though, because I can, quite remarkably, buy unhomogenized buffalo milk!), basil from the garden and our own beautiful (Latah variety) tomato. A drizzle of Simone's family's olive oil and some sea salt was all it otherwise needed.
But, as I said, it needed something more to make it a meal. That's where things may have gotten a little out of hand...
What we ended up with was something of a feast. Salad caprese, a raw marinated zucchini salad with mint, grilled zucchini with olive oil and garlic, beans stewed in sweet tomatoes, fresh foccacia with potato and rosemary, fresh foccacia with parmesan and red onion, smoked salmon, meats, olives and wine! What we really needed were 3 or 4 good friends to share the feast with, but we made do and it was delicious. The lad noted [he seems to increasingly find himself cast here in the role of food critic...intense pressure, poor lad!] that the tomato tasted like the ones his Grandma used to grow and give him in tomato sandwiches when he was a kid. He was right - it was a nostalgic tomato taste that only home-grown fruit can give. And the good news is that the other 4 tomato plants are covered in hard, green, ugly fruit - just waiting for some sunshine to make their cheeks all rosey and ripe.
And so we wait too....
The feast
Grilled zucchini with garlic and olive oil (and basil because it looked pretty)
The two types of foccacia. It's a potato-based bread and is really lovely
OMG. That tomato does indeed look stunning and the salad has me salivating all over my rather unappetising noodle lunch. But wait, there's more?! What an incredible feast!!!
ReplyDeleteAm surprised to hear you can buy unhomogenised buffalo milk over there. I wonder if I can find the same here. Have you tried to make buffalo mozz before? Do you/would you just follow your usual mozz recipe or is it different? Can't wait for the follow up on that one!