Caprese Bites

This weekend at the farmers’ market, SoupAddict spied the season’s first basket of cherry heirloom tomatoes at a booth across the way. SoupAddict loves cherry heirloom tomatoes with all her soupy heart, so of course she made a bee-line straight for them.

(She’s certain that if she were watching this from afar, the scene would’ve rolled out in spectacular slow motion, with SoupAddict making grands lunges this way and that, dodging children, heroically leaping over dogs on leashes, and side-swiping a basket of zucchini, sending the green fruit upward in a magnificent spray, each tumbling end over end.)

As SoupAddict got close to the table, she saw something in that basket that nearly sent her right over the edge: black cherry tomatoes. Black cherry tomatoes are SoupAddict’s favorite of favorites. She does, in fact, grow not one but two, outrageously prolific black cherry plants each year, because why settle for 500 black cherry tomatoes when you can have 1,000? That’s SoupAddict’s philosophy: quantity is a quality all its own.

(As a side note to the black cherries, SoupAddict just this day noticed that a volunteer tomato plant, which she’s let sprawl across a corner of her garden in its natural, unstaked state, is actually a black cherry. So, she has three black cherry tomato plants and will be positively buried by cherry tomatoes by September. And as further proof that Mother Nature is smarter than any of us, this plant was actually the first tomato plant to bloom and produce fruit, despite SoupAddict’s best efforts to get a head start by growing from seed in the dead of winter.)

Okay, SoupAddict has officially taken the subject way, way off topic, and must veer back.

She does that sometimes.

Especially when she gets to yammering about tomatoes.

Cherry tomatoes are bite-sized packages of delicious tomato goodness … but they’re horribly abused in crudités, grossly undeserving of their also-ran treatment piled ho-hummingly in one of the serving tray’s slots. No, no. Summer tomatoes demand a starring role. Something delicious, something unexpected.

Like a one-bite caprese salad.

Like all of the tomatoes in the “black” color category, their coloring is simply dark, whether red, purple or brown (how awesome would that be, to have a truly black tomato!), but are distinguished particularly by their flavor, which is complex and truly dreamy. Black cherries are burgundy with dark green shoulders. Can you spot them in the strainer above, nestled among the other cherries?

SoupAddict’s basil gardens are lovely again this year, which makes her weepy with sheer happiness. (This year, SoupAddict is going to try a radical experiment of just freezing the leaves, completely intact, in a vacuum bag. There’s a lot of debate about this technique, but SoupAddict does not care in the least if they turn brown in the freezer. If they thaw with that summery basil flavor, that’s all that matters.)

You’ll also need Mozzarella Ciliegine or Bocconcini (fresh mozzarella shaped in small balls).

Prepare the basil by slicing them chiffonade. First, stack 5 or 6 basil leaves (with the largest on the bottom). Then roll the stack tightly, lengthwise. Keeping a good grip on the roll, slice into narrow strips.

See how they remain curled? Leave the curls be until you need them.

Slice the tomatoes in half, keeping the pairs together. (On second thought, it just occurred to SoupAddict that mixing them up would be really cool, both visually and flavorly.)

Now take an appetizer pick. Something with a flat side works best, to keep the everything from spinning around. SoupAddict has no memory of buying these pitch-forky picks, but they came in handy for this project.

Add one tomato half and push it up to about the halfway point on the pick.

Carefully drop a basil curl onto the pick. Hold the pick upright if it keeps wanting to fall off.

Add one mozzarella ball, pushing it gently against the basil and tomato half. This will keep the basil curl in place.

Add another curl, and then finish with the other tomato half.

Plate, and drizzle with your favorite balsamic vinegar or dressing. (If SoupAddict had not been in such a hurry to shove these things into her gob to sample the results, she would’ve used a thick balsamic dressing, which would have drizzled elegantly in swirls and curves across the plate of caprese bites, instead of splishes and splashes. She’s sure you’ll do better.)

Elegant drizzlies or not, the peeps will love the little caprese bites of heaven. It’s summer on a stick.

And when you’re finished assembling the plate of appetizers, treat yourself to the full caprese salad. You deserve it.

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Caprese Bites

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Total Time15 minutes mins

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: American

Keyword: caprese bites

Author: Karen Gibson

Ingredients

• 12 cherry tomatoes , sliced in half
• 12 Ciliegine (mozzarella balls)
• 3 basil leaves , sliced chiffonade (producing little curls)
• Balsamic dressing

Equipment

• 24 appetizer picks (forked as shown, to keep the tomatoes from spinning)

Instructions

• On a sturdy double-branded appetizer pick, thread a half of a cherry tomato, cut side up, followed by curls of basil, one mozzarella ball, and then cap it off with another cherry tomato half, cut side down.
• Arrange the bites on a platter and drizzle with balsamic dressing.

Nutritional information, if shown, is provided as a courtesy only, and is not to be taken as medical information or advice. The nutritional values of your preparation of this recipe are impacted by several factors, including, but not limited to, the ingredient brands you use, any substitutions or measurement changes you make, and measuring accuracy.