A few years ago, if you told someone you were hankering for a nice caprese salad, they might have thought you were some sort of effete continental. These days McDonald's has one on their menu. Restaurants even serve them in the dead of winter when the only tomatoes to be found are the flavorless greenhouse baseball variety. Now that caprese is commonplace, let's remix it. Never made a caprese before? Just do like R. Kelly and hit them with the remix before the original.
First we need some tomatoes. Please, don't disrepect this dish by using crappy tomatoes. Luckily for you, this time of year it's hard to find a bad 'mater. Still, avoid the romas or hydroponic varieties. Right now the best ones are about three times the size of your average cherry tomato, like the heirlooms above.
If this was your normal caprese, we put some mozzarella di bufala on there. Here we've got some nice unpasteurized goat milk feta. The shape is important - these squares break up nicely with your fork. The heady flavor of the goat contasts with some mint in place of the traditional basil. Not too much mint - look for a good balance.
All that's left to do is dress it with some olive oil and a judicious amount of balsamic vinegar. If your tomatoes are sweet enough, skip the vinegar. garnish with some coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, then dig in.
Tomatoes, cheese, herb: that's the formula. Above is a festive cotija cheese and parsley variety. We used a little lemon juice here in place of the vinegar. There's one of the ironclad rules of cooking - you can't mess anything up with parsley or lemons, quoth my grandfather. Happy remixing!
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