Bloody Mary Salad

If you’re looking for massive amounts of tomatoes, go with cherries and plums.  Without a doubt, this year we harvested more tomatoes than ever before.  We picked over 6 baskets (6-8 cups each) of cherry and plum tomatoes alone.  We also had the best batch of Black Krim tomatoes with over 10 gorgeous and very large tomatoes.   And, we picked about 10 Golden Jubilee.  There would have been more, but, a couple over-ripened on the vine.

The Sun Gold cherries and black plum tomatoes were the most rugged of the bunch.  Followed by the Super Sweet 100s, they were the last three types of tomatoes to keep producing fruit.

Now that we’re relying on store-bought tomatoes, we’re getting more creative to bring out the flavor of season’s end produce.  This one is lovely.  We’ve adapted it from Bon Apetit’s recipe.

Bloody Mary Salad
serves 2

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2-3 Roma tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 small cucumber, diced
1 stalk celery, sliced

Bloody Mary Vinaigrette
1 small red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup your favorite green olives, pimento or jalapeño stuffed
1 clove garlic, crushed
3 Tablespoons sherry or red wine vinegar
1/4 cup your favorite olive oil
1 ounce vodka
splash of Worcestershire sauce
splash your favorite hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
fine sea salt, to taste

In a large bowl, mix tomatoes, cucumber and celery.  Set aside.

In a mason jar (or any sealable vinaigrette bottle), combine all vinaigrette ingredients.  Seal and shake vigorously.  Drizzle over salad and toss to combine.  Pour into salad bowl.  Serve with slices of grilled bread and steaks (or grilled chicken, or lamb chops or pork chops).