Caprese Salad
A Neapolitan salad from Capri: slices of ripe tomato and buffalo mozzarella laid in rows with basil leaves, sprinkled with salt and olive oil.
First let the mozzarella lose its refrigerator chill while you slice the tomatoes and get the platter ready. Assemble the salad close to serving time with the basil, adding salt and oil right at the end. The crucial detail is salting only just before it reaches the table.
Ingredients
- 600 g tomatoes, ripe and firm
- 250 g mozzarella di bufala, in brine
- 1 bunch fresh basil
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- sea salt, to taste
How to make it
- Take the mozzarella out of the refrigerator half an hour before serving and let it sit in its brine at room temperature. It's ready when it yields softly to a light touch — cold mozzarella tastes of almost nothing. ⏱ 30 min · passiveChef's tip Cold mutes both aroma and the milky sweetness of buffalo mozzarella, and fat stays firm and waxy on the tongue. At room temperature the ball feels yielding under a fingertip and releases a faint sweet-milk smell.
- Slice the tomatoes about 1 cm thick with a sharp knife. Saw gently through the skin without pressing down from above, so the slices stay whole and the juice stays in the flesh.Chef's tip Slice from the stem end down toward the base rather than across: that way you open fewer seed chambers, and the jelly stays in the slice instead of running out onto the platter.
- Lift the mozzarella out of the brine and let it drain on a clean kitchen towel until the surface is matte and no longer wet — otherwise the brine will dilute the oil on the platter. Then slice it about 1 cm thick, so the slices are just as thick as the tomato slices.Chef's tip Wet mozzarella keeps weeping onto the platter, so what you taste at the end is salty whey rather than olive oil. Give it a few minutes on the towel until it looks matte, and blot the cut faces too.
- Arrange the drained mozzarella slices and tomato slices alternately in an overlapping row on a flat platter. Let each slice cover about half of the previous one, so both the red and the white stand out.
- Tear the basil leaves from the stems with your fingers and tuck them in between the slices. Use whole leaves and no knife, since cut surfaces turn dark within a few minutes.
- Sprinkle sea salt over the tomato slices and drizzle the olive oil over the platter in a thin stream, until all the slices glisten. Do this only just before serving, since the salt draws the juice out of the tomatoes if it's added too early.Chef's tip Salt pulls water out of the tomato slices through osmosis — within 10-15 minutes a watery pink pool forms under them and the flesh goes limp. Salt the tomatoes only, and only once the platter is heading to the table.
- Set the platter in the middle of the table right away, while the salad is still at room temperature, and let everyone help themselves to slices on their own plate.
