Sunday in Sorrento

 

 

 

To my mind, Caprese is one of the delights of visiting Italy, and I thought of it often during the long flight to Rome. It is a simple dish to fix and can be made at home in the United States, but it will never be the same as eating it in Italy, say, at an outdoor café in a piazza with a beautiful cathedral or basilica looming up in front of you.

Then there are the ingredients: the tomatoes, which are so delicious, fresh that morning from a vine in the countryside, and the mozzarella, also fresh and made from buffalo milk. You can buy little plastic-wrapped blobs of “fresh” mozzarella in the States, but they’re made from cow’s milk and are much less rich and of a somewhat rubbery consistency. Our buffalo are the wrong kind. Imagine trying to milk an American buffalo. You’d be trampled in one of the stampedes so popular in old western films. In Italy the source of mozzarella is the water buffalo, originally from Asia, and its milk has over twice the fat content. Go to Italy! Eat the real thing!

Insalata Caprese

• Slice 4 ripe tomatoes (large tomatoes such as beef-steaks) and 9 ounces of fresh buffalo-milk mozzarella. Overlap the slices alternately on the plate.

• Decorate the slices with fresh basil leaves or chopped basil or oregano.

• Grate fresh pepper over the salad or serve the pepper separately. (Salt if desired, but lightly.)

• Drizzle liberally with a good, extra virgin olive oil.

• Serve with balsamic vinegar for those who like it on caprese—I do, but residents of Capri and the Campania would be horrified—and with chunks of Italian bread.

• For lunch, as a snack, as a first course—it’s wonderful.

Carolyn Blue,
“Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Albuquerque Sun-Times