← Nouns Cooking · Italian

Ingredients

• 500 g ripe tomatoes (mixed colours if you can)
• 2 balls of mozzarella or buffalo mozzarella (125 g each)
• 1 handful basil leaves
• 3 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil
• flaky sea salt and black pepper
• 1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Method

1. Slice the tomatoes about 1 cm thick, lay them on a plate and sprinkle with a little salt. Leave them for 5 min while you prepare the cheese; this draws out their flavour.
2. Drain the mozzarella, pat it dry and slice or tear it into pieces about the same size as the tomatoes.
3. Arrange the tomatoes and mozzarella on a platter, overlapping them, and tuck basil leaves in between.
4. Pour over the olive oil, grind on some pepper and add a few more flakes of salt. Drizzle with balsamic if you like, and serve at room temperature.

Tips

• Never refrigerate the tomatoes: cold kills their flavour and texture.
• Add balsamic at the very end so it does not stain the cheese.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

BBC Good Food RecipeTin Eats