It’s no secret that I love a certain Mr Yotam Ottolenghi’s food, in fact my sister and I recently went to see him talk about his current book and sat in the front row like total Fan Girls. Anyway this is his tomato salad that I’ve been making pretty regularly recently because it is utterly delicious. Grab some flatbreads (or make your own), grill some chicken, dollop some hummus, this salad and a bit of greenery in said flatbread and you’ve got yourself a very tasty meal. Or substitute the chicken for fried halloumi, or tofu, or whatever floats your boat, because it’ll be wonderful. Serves 6 as a side salad – I’ve increased the amount of salad dressing from the original recipe because I like it that way, and substituted shallots for red onion, because that’s what I happened to have.
Ingredients
1 small red onion thinly sliced into half moons
2 tbsp sumac
2 tbsp white-wine vinegar
Around 750g mixed cherry and baby plum tomatoes
3 tbsp olive oil
A small bunch of basil
25g toasted pine nuts
Method
- Grab your serving dish and put the onion, vinegar and a good hefty pinch of salt in there – massage the onion so that the vinegar and salt can help it to soften while you rustle up the rest.
- Halve the tomatoes (or quarter any larger ones) and throw them in on top of the shallots.
- Toast the pine nuts and throw them in too.
- Pick the leaves from the basil, rip the bigger ones up, reserve some to garnish the top and throw the rest into the dish.
- Pour in the oil, vinegar, more salt and pepper, and toss the whole lot to combine.
- Taste to check your seasoning/dressing, garnish with the remaining basil leaves and serve.
From My Kitchen 