Marinated Garden Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and Cucumbers
Salads
April 13, 2023
“Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What would life be like without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.”
— John Denver
The home-grown tomatoes that have inspired so many songs and poetry originated in South America and were called by the Aztecs xitomatl (pronounced ‘ji-tomatel’, literal translation “the swelling fruit”). By the time they were introduced to the English, their name evolved from xitomatl to tomato mainly to mimic the other South American food that was introduced some decades earlier, the potato.
So, although tomato and potato sound the same, they have different histories, denote different things, and have very little in common. Plus, one is a root vegetable, while there other is a fruit.
That’s right, tomatoes are fruits, berries to be exact, very large berries! If any of this hurts your head, we can blame the US supreme court, back in the 1890s, for playing a role in confusing the hell out of people when they categorized tomatoes as vegetables for taxation purposes.
As a New World Fruit, with more than 10,000 varieties, tomatoes range in color anywhere from pink and purple, to black and yellow, and going beyond the riches of color and taste, tomatoes are the richest source of lycopene. As if you needed more reasons to eat tomatoes…
The Taste of Montana team recently had the pleasure of harvesting a generous bounty from our friend’s garden – a dedicated and highly skilled surgeon whose expertise seems to have spilled over from the surgery room to his vegetable garden. Garden-fresh tomatoes are so ripe and delicious that when you plunk a handful into your mouth, juice dribbles down your chin, and single-handedly makes all store-bought tomatoes so shamefully pale in comparison that one may barely view them edible or fit for human consumption.
The beautiful and flavorful garden-fresh tomatoes that didn’t get acquainted with the chomping of our teeth on that day made it to this salad. Combined with just a few simple ingredients, which we’ll gladly share with you in this recipe, this gourmet salad was the best accompaniment to our Sous Vide Pork Chops and its Five Spice Pear Sauce dinner, with this sweet buttery sauce aptly intensifying the sharp and the nuanced flavors of garden-fresh tomatoes. Enjoy.
Marinated Garden Tomato Salad With Mozzarella And Cucumbers
Ingredients
- 2 lbs small fresh garden tomatoes
- 1/2 cucumber sliced and quartered
- 1/2 cup mozzarella cubed
- 3 TBSP olive oil
- 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar
- 2 cloves garlic pressed or minced
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp dried basil
Instructions
- Combine tomatoes, mozzarella, and quartered cucumbers together in a mixing bowl and set aside.
- In a small bowl, mix olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and seasonings.
- Drizzle balsamic vinaigrette dressing over tomatoes, mozzarella, and cucumbers.
- Mix well.
- Marinate tomato salad for at least an hour, but overnight rocks the flavors.
- Give the tomato salad a toss before serving and enjoy the harvest.
