Bread and Tomato Salad

Peachtree Circle has been growing at least half a dozen tomato varieties this year at its Sippwissett farm. They include sweet small Sun Golds, Lillian’s Heirloom Yellow, orange Kellogg’s Breakfast, beautifully lobed red Soldacki, Eva Purple Ball (reminiscent of Brandywines) dusky Cherokee Purple and some amazing long tomatoes with crooked tips that look like hot red peppers. Real tomatoes in all shapes and sizes, with loads of personality! (If you’ve read Tomatoland, Barry Estabrook’s eye-opening best-seller about the modern tomato industry, you’ll be all the more grateful for locally-grown tomatoes like these.)  Carrie Richter from Peachtree Circle will happily guide you through each variety’s flavor and texture.

Bread and Tomato Salad
Ripe tomatoes, almost bursting with juice, and dry left-over bread (to sop up their juices) are the prime ingredients for this rustic salad. If you don’t have dried-out bread (or baguette) at hand, use lightly-toasted bread instead.  What you’ll need per person:
1 large, very ripe tomato
salt and pepper
½ tsp. red wine or sherry vinegar
2 tsp. olive oil
1 dry (or lightly toasted) slice of bread
2 slices red onion, stacked and chopped
few torn up leaves of fresh basil or oregano
1 bocconcini, or thick slice of fresh mozzarella
few small black olives, optional

Cut tomato into cubes (about ¾-inches) saving all the juice on the cutting board.  Tip tomato and juice into a small soup bowl. Season well with salt, pepper, vinegar and oil. Stir in chopped onion, and leave for 5 minutes to let more juices run and flavors mingle. Cut or tear bread into rough cubes about the same size as tomato chunks.  Add to the bowl, mixing to coat bread in juice. Cut or tear mozzarella into rough cubes (ragged edges catch juices better.) Stir mozzarella and herbs into salad. Taste for seasoning; add a final sprinkle of vinegar and drizzle of olive oil if salad looks dry – though if your tomato is luscious and juicy, that probably won’t be necessary. Add olives, if you like, and your salad is ready.
Market variation: instead of Mediterranean herbs and olives, add local zing with 1-2 teaspoons Singe-sations jalapeno topping.

Further reading: Tomatoland is available through Eight Cousins bookstore, a few minutes’ walk from the market.