Today I decided to celebrate my successes with a mini-harvest. I grocery shopped today and picked up some price-y mozzarella and some ripe on-the-vine tomatoes, intent on making a tomato-basil salad.
First, I scissor-clipped some mesclun greens, as per the instructions of Garden Nerd:
and hand-picked a small bunch of basil:
Here’s the salad!
I liberally applied the mozzarella and dressed it simply with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and a good quality extra virgin olive oil.
It was really delicious. Wow, those mesclun greens, grown from seeds which I purchased from ReneesGarden.com, were just terrific. I get really “meh” about bland lettuce that doesn’t taste like anything. These have a really strong, earthy, herby flavor, and you could really tell that there were multiple varieties going on. Loved it! What a great find!
The basil was fine. I can’t rave about it, but its not because there was anything wrong with it. It was just a more Italian, classically “spicy” basil when I think I prefer the sweeter varieties. It was also kind of “tough”, not the tender leaves I normally get with sweet basil varieties. It is, by the way, the Cameo Container Basil from Renee’s Garden. Its really, really flavorful and I bet it will make spectacular pesto at the end of the summer. I do love a good pesto! I think next spring I will try another variety, maybe the Sweet Green Basil type.
Oh man, cruising that site is dangerous. Especially that “What to Plant in June” link…
June 5, 2010
nerdswithhammers
1 responses to “First harvest”
Garden Nerd
June 14th, 2010 at 19:01
Mmm! Caprese style salad is wonderful stuff. It’s pretty much summer in a dish.
If you’re not into the standard Genovese basil or Mammoth basil, you might want to look into lemon basil and/or lime basil. I grow both of them in addtion to the aforementioned basils and they’re quite different. They definitely do have hints of the citrus fruits that they’re named after. We make a pesto with the two of them and call it 7UP pesto (lemon/lime.) Thai basil is another nice option as is cinnamon basil. It’s really amazing all the varieties that are out there.
Does your mesclun mix have arugula in it? If not, you might want to consider adding some of that. Since you prefer your salads to be non-bland, arugula’s peppery flavor definitely makes sure there’s no dull salads.