Heirloom Tomato & Blue Cheese Salad

Every summer, we would drive to Martinsville, VA from wherever we were living at the time to visit my Mom’s family. While my parents would stay with my grandmother, my brother and I got to stay with my great Aunt Florence at the hotel — a great white monstrosity founded by my great grandmother and namesake that was renown for its food. People used to come from all over the south just to eat there.

Lunch was always the big meal of the day and I can still remember the spread: fried chicken, cornbread, biscuits, collard greens cooked with fat back, pinto beans with a red wine vinegar and red onion dressing and sliced tomatoes. As a kid, I wouldn’t touch a raw tomato with a 10 foot pole (silly me), but I always loved looking at the ones that Florence grew in the garden behind the hotel. They were huge, gnarled, funny looking things, but so brightly colored that they fascinated me. My favorites were the bright yellow ones with the raspberry stripes.

What I was admiring, of course, were heirloom tomatoes. The term was coined in the late 1980’s to describe a tomato variety where the seed has either been around for at least 50 years or has been handed down through generations of a single family. Because that’s how tomatoes used to be grown — in family gardens, not in hot houses. Thankfully, farmers today are once again embracing the heirloom tomato because people have realized that they taste better. Much better. Hot house tomatoes tend to be mushy and tasteless while heirloom tomatoes literally burst with flavor. And color. And character.

So, this summer, embrace the ugly and buy some heirloom tomatoes. There are dozens of varieties in all shapes and sizes. The yellow ones are still my favorite, but I also love the deep red ones called Black Krim and the striped green Zebra tomatoes. The large ones, I slice like an onion and the small ones, I quarter.  Top them with a little sea salt and olive oil and YUM — summer at its finest.

Heirloom Tomato & Blue Cheese Salad
(serves 4-6)

4-5 lbs  heirloom tomatoes
arugula or some other green
3-4 oz.  blue cheese *
3-4 T good quality olive oil
3-4 basil leaves
sea salt **

Spread your greens over your serving platter. Arugula works really nicely, but the other day, I used baby kale micro-greens which were also delicious. Slice your tomatoes and lay them over the greens. Top with the sea salt, crumbled blue cheese and olive oil. Then, take your basil leaves, stack them one on top of each other, roll them into a cylinder and use kitchen shears to slice the basil into strips and sprinkle them across the top of the salad. Now, serve.

The ingredient amounts listed here are simply a guideline. Feel free to use more or less of anything depending on your individual taste. However, definitely make more than you think you need. People love this salad and no matter how much I’ve made, there’s never any leftover.

* I like to use a sheep’s milk based blue cheese. It’s a little milder than a cow based blue which I think works nicely with this dish. If you don’t like blue cheese, feel free to substitute feta or goat cheese.

** I use Mom’s special salt. The sesame seeds not only make this salad look pretty, but they add a nice kick of flavor.