The evolution of a great salad: heirloom tomatoes, peaches, herbs and chèvre.

Inspired by both my Boulud Sud salad and the fact that we are thick in the middle of tomato season, I made this beauty last night.

Heirloom tomato, peach, herb and chevre salad with shallots and apple vinaigrette.

Heirloom tomatoes that were so tomatoey I hardly knew what to do (because how rare in this hybridized age is a tomatoey purchased tomato?!), paired magically with peeled and sliced peaches, young chèvre, a handful of chopped herbs from my garden and a lovely apple vinaigrette that I made with a Granny Smith Apple Balsamic I bought at Williams-Sonoma just yesterday. Diced shallots provided a bit of kick. 

If you want to test the freshness and piquancy of your shallots, slice one. If it makes you cry, you're in great shape for kick. If not, you'll have a much tamer but still lovely flavor.

Aren't those tomato hearts surreal?

Using fresh herbs is such an underrated means of boosting the flavor and beauty of most any dish. And do they ever love tomatoes. In my scrumptious Herby Tomato Tart, I use equal parts parsley, basil and chives. Last night I used a similar blend: two types of basil, thyme and chives.

This salad is definitely best when no part of it beyond the cheese has ever been cold. Please, please, I beseech you: DO NOT store your tomatoes in the fridge. You will kill all flavor and texture and make me feel so sad. 

I used a very young chèvre that is creamy, tangy and just solid enough to maintain itself at room temperature. I also let it sit on the counter for a good half-hour before serving. 

You want to use peaches that are definitely ripe but not mushy. They need to have the slightest hint of crunch so that they stand up to the soft tomato flesh and cheese. Overripe peaches tend to lose not only their marvelous texture but also their flavor. Blech- mealy peaches are as awful as mealy apples.

As far as vinaigrettes go, I like to keep mine simple: equal parts oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. If you have an especially strong vinegar or want to include mustard, you'll likely want to use a higher ratio of oil to the tangy elements: 60/40 or so. But keep things basic, use good quality stuff and let the fruits and veggies shine. 

The Granny Smith Apple Balsamic is really delicious, and I highly recommend it. If you don't want to buy any because you don't get misty-eyed over new vinegars as do I, substitute white Balsamic or Champagne vinegar or maybe a blend of those. 

This recipe will be posted momentarily in Salads.

Pinball continued

... There was a lesson on tamale- and tortilla-making. Rosa, our teacher, hails from Michoacán, and is the wife of the overseer out here. She is so lovely and her chile sauce is out of this world regarding its depth of flavor. We made so many tamales and a small mountain of tortillas, and I plan to source some great masa back home so that I can practice and make my own. Rosa plucked these corn husks from her own garden.

Here was dinner, which included a spectacularly delicious salad of dandelion greens, roasted sweet potatoes and beets, candied pecans, fennel, orange segments, dried cherries, pecorino and an incredible vinaigrette crafted from reduced balsamic, Prosecco, fresh orange juice and a million herbs.

Our main was a short rib ragù atop fettuccine. I told y'all we'd eat well!

This morning there were petroglyphs, dating from the 1400s or later and assumed to have been crafted by Comanche tribe members. Most were of animals, presumably those they hunted. To get to these, we drove to a part of the ranch we'd not yet explored -part of the Llano Estacado- forded a shallow river and hightailed it by enormous slabs of layered rock under and between which rattlesnakes could definitely be staying cool. I'm sure I looked like a prancing ninny, but having been told two days ago of a six-footer having been seen recently and just this morning hearing about it being tarantula season, I'd have walked to those glyphs on stilts if I'd had some. Can y'all imagine an effing six-foot rattlesnake?! Jesus h. I am not an overly fearful gal, but snakes and spiders are not creatures I wish to encounter at any time.

I made four small apple-pear pies -one for Rosa, one for the ranch owners who have been so generous in showing us around, two for us- and played with my adopted passel of kittens, deeply wishing I could bring them all home. I finally got to talk to the boys who begged me to return today. Tomorrow, boys, I promise! And so I'm off now, to shower and pack. There are tamales to be eaten, chile to be made, kittens to snuggle.

Dinner o' pasties and gorgeous summer salad

Can I just tell you how glad I was to remember my batch of frozen pasties tonight? VERY. This afternoon, I took the boys swimming for a while which was fun but extremely tiring despite the fact that I was never in water deeper than 3.5 feet. We met a pal and her darling daughter there, and really, it was stunning to witness boys v. girls at play. She was delicate and relatively calm though she does have an impressive set of lungs (you cute girl, you really do), while my children raced through the fountains at warp speed, pretending the bursts were things which must be cut down, razed!, destroyed!. and periodically cruising over to me at which point they would climb/hang/cling on me to beat sixty. I nearly lost my bathing suit more than once. We then went to the bookstore and finally made it home.

Long story short, beyond roasting some beets for a summer salad, I didn't have much in the way of a plan for dinner, and T was obviously not excited about "just a salad" for his meal. Pasties in the freezer. Amen!