SUMMER DELIGHT
HOME GROWN TOMATOES WITH BALSAMIC AND OIL
I wait in anticipation for this time of year, when the tomatoes are fully ripe and ready for the picking the slicing and the eating! And oh what a feast to lay out for yourself and friends if you have any there with you. The best part there is no cooking involved.
You need tomatoes, fresh off of the vine, lightly rinsed under the faucet.
Cut the Tomatoes into ¼ inch slabs, and lay on a large dinner plate or larger serving platter if you have friends with you.
Drizzle the Balsamic Vinegar (it has to be balsamic) on the top of each slab of slice tomato on the plate (or platter).
Drizzle some Extra Virgin Olive Oil on the top of each tomato slab.
Now here come the best part, freshly ground black pepper on all of the slabs tomatoes (already drenched with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.
Wait we are not yet through. Now lightly sprinkle some fine sea salt over all the tomato slabs.
Now add some side plates of slightly warmed slice salami, and some slice curls (using the carrot peeler) of Romano or Parnassian Cheese and maybe some soft mozzarella. My mouth is already salivating in anticipation. Now the piece de résistance:
Pop the cork on a plain bottle of everyday Italian Red Wine. No heritage just some fermented grapes in a bottle. The cheap ordinary stuff, but be sure that it is from an Italian vineyard, or the person that produce the wine is has an Italian sounding name!
Ah, the tomatoes will fill your mouth with wonderful flavors, sweetness from the tomatoes and the balsamic, the pepper brings inner flavor of the tomato to the forefront, and the sea salt, kicks up the volume.
98 % of the salt in the United States comes from a salt mine in Cleveland Ohio. The mine is 400 feet below ground and it extends out under the Lake Erie. Salt used for the cooking, salt for the roads in winter, salt for just about anything that calls for salt, and this is technically sea salt that settled over the eons to give the USA one of the largest deposits of sea salt in the world.
What I am trying to say, if you only have Morton's "When it rains it pours…..use it! ~Parnelli