Caprese Salad

Is there anything as good as a ripe tomato and some cheese and vinegar. In the summer the only thing better is being able to pick your big fat tomato from the garden and slice it still warm from the sun. I happened to have some really nice ripe tomatoes and although it's not summer I had to!

Gorgeous!

You will need:

• some beautiful ripe tomatoes (don't do it if your tomatoes are not ripe)
• a few leaves of fresh basil
• good balsamic vinegar (mine was 12 years old)
• your best olive oil
• some big chunky sea salt (I used my best Hawaiian Alaea Sea Salt)
• fresh mozzarella cheese

Step 1: slice your fresh Mozzarella cheese. If you can get Buffalo Mozzarella this is the perfect way to eat it. You can also sometimes find this behind the deli counter at good markets.

Step 2: slice your tomatoes into fat slices, top with slices of fresh mozzarella, some slivers of basil, some chunks of salt, a drizzle of vinegar and olive oil and some fresh cracked pepper if you like.

Step 3: serve right away with some nice crusty bread so you can sop up all the juices at the bottom of the dish. This is called Scarpetta in Italian,  which means to soak up the juices with bread! YUM.

Glorious, what else can you say!