Friday Night Lites

Last night I had the time to make a salad I'd been thinking about for a week. Fresh tomato, fresh cucumber, basil and oregano from my yard...and that magical elixir, balsamic vinegar with olive oil. It turned out to be delicious, and when I added the small mozzarella balls (bocconcini, I think they're called, meaning small mouthfulls) it was a perfect Friday night lite meal.

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3-4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt

10 fresh basil leaves

5 fresh oregano leaves

3 small fresh cucumbers

2 large beefsteak tomatoes, vine ripened

Optional: red onion, mozzarella

Mince garlic (or take it out of a jar, like I did) and let it stand in the balsamic and red wine vinegars. By the way - I doubled the balsamic vinegar. It makes my skirt fly up.

Wash basil and oregano, roll up leaves and slice into little strips. Chop and put in your best olive oil (extra virgin light is what I used).

Wash and peel cucumbers, slice thinly into 1/4" coins. Remove stem and blossom end from tomatoes (really very little is removed). Cut into wedges being careful not to crush and lose any juice from the tomatoes.

Place the tomatoes and cucumbers in the salad bowl and sprinkle with salt.

Whisk together the vinegars and olive oil and pour over tomatoes and cucumbers. Toss gently and serve.

Note: I added some thinly sliced red onion, less than a quarter of the onion. And I added some mozzarella because I wanted this to be a meal. I added both before tossing with the dressing.

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I loved this salad! I used to make one when I lived in Montgomery that had cucumber, tomato, bow tie pasta (farfalle) oil and vinegar, dill and basil. It's very much like that, but I wanted a version without the pasta. That said, you could add pasta to this and it would probably be wonderful (might have to increase the dressing).

[there's some kind of weird spacing funk going on with this post that I can't fix - sorry!]