blt salad

I’ve posted enough about my dislike of lettuce, I think, but there are a few ways in which I really love it.  BLT sandwich is one.  Who wouldn’t like thick, peppered bacon, a quarter-inch slice of juicy August tomato, and a handful of crunchy bittersweet lettuce, layered on a slice of fresh bread slathered with homemade mayonnaise?  Heaven.

Our tomatoes are having a weird season, and the heirloom long-season slicers and paste tomatoes are coming in before the short-season slicers.  The cherries suffered early in the summer, but came back to set fruit by the bucketful on the tops of the plants, so now I have more Supersweet100s, Sungolds and Yellow Pear cherry tomatoes than I can eat.    So I thought I’d slice up a bowlful and make an excuse for a salad.

BLT Salad

• all the cherry tomatoes you can get your hands on
• all the remaining bacon you have left over from breakfast
• glug of olive oil
• couple spritzes of excellent sherry vinegar
• pinch salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• a couple of romaine lettuce hearts, sliced into fine ribbons
• handful of basil from the garden, sliced into fine ribbons

Cut tomatoes in half and toss with bacon, olive oil, vinegar and salt and pepper.  Mound lettuce and basil on top of dressed tomatoes, then bring to table.  Toss immediately before serving, since lettuce starts to wilt in the dressing.  Die of pleasure.  Choose whether you will leave leftovers as your legacy before doing so.