Archive for the ‘peppers’ Category
Green Pepper and Tomato Salad
If you love tomatoes, and especially if you grow your own (or have access to homegrowns), here’s a tangy, tasty salad that stars them front and center. It was a staple in my house growing up, appearing in my mother’s repertoire from mid-summer through fall, as the homegrown tomato crop came in.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 8 medium (baseball-sized) tomatoes cut into wedges 1/2″ to 1″ wide
- 4 medium-large green bell peppers, seeded and cut into bite-sized chunks
- 1 medium onion, halved and then sliced thinly
Directions
- In a salad bowl, prepare Giselle’s Vinaigrette.
- Chop the tomatoes, peppers, and onions and add to the bowl.
- Toss well before serving.
Preparation Notes
- A key to this recipe is good tomatoes: ripe, sweet, succulent, flavorful. If all you have access to are the thick, dry, pulpless, flavorless market tomatoes one is often limited to out of season, give it a miss.
- If the tomatoes are especially pulpy, prior to adding them to the salad, allow them to drain in a colander or even use a knife to remove some of the pulp. Otherwise the salad can become “soupy.”
- Green bell peppers are also fairly essential: both in the flavor they bring and in the pleasing contrast their color adds to the tomatoes. Red bells, while great in many other things, are too sweet for this salad, and green fryers are too thin-walled. Stick with green bells, at least the first time you make it. You may get good results experimenting with other non-red balls such as yellows.
- Generally this salad works best as is. I’ve tried adding cucumber slices and found they added little, in fact detracted from the presentation. If you have some fresh basil on hand, one or two teaspoons minced can be a nice addition.
- While you don’t need to use Giselle’s Vinaigrette, do be sure to use a vinaigrette as the dressing for this salad. Use one that does not overpower, but allows the natural flavors of the tomatoes and peppers to own center stage.
Serving Notes
- Salad can be served lightly chilled or at room temperature.
- Unlike green salads, which go soggy and become inedible within several hours of tossing, this salad can keep for several days. It is often even better the second day, when the flavors from the tomatoes and peppers have had time to coalesce with the vinaigrette.