Simple Tomato Salad

So last Sunday was a bit of a letdown all around - the internet went boom, and getting up we realized we'd be spending a goodish part of the day at the vet, fixing the girlcat's infected foot. Luckily the lunch we had planned benefited from waiting a bit, and so we threw together a potato salad and this fresh tomato concoction before leaving. (The foot is fine now. The cat it's attached to hates me for the antibiotics though.)

The original recipe called for cilantro, which I'm not too fond of in its raw state, so I substituted parsley. Yes, traditional, curly parsley. It has a bad rep, and I just don't understand why. Is it the mouth-feel? You just need to chop it more finely than your average herb! Is it that it's just not as hip as its flatter cousin? I would be happy to use flat-leaf parsley in a load of things, but sadly the flat parsley you get in the shops here is disgustingly overgrown and coarse. Which makes me wonder how hard it is to grow? I have yet to kill my chili plants and I made a piece of ginger root shoot up an enormously tall, er, stalk, so clearly I now have the magic touch and could grow anything.*


Anyway, this salad is fast and easy and the season of non-disgusting tomatoes is just around the corner, so I think this'll be one of our summer go-tos in the future. Yum!

*never mind that the chili isn't actually blooming or anything. It's not dead! It's making loads of pretty leaves!

Simple Tomato Salad
adapted from Glorian ruoka & viini 4/2007, serves 2-4

500 g (1 lb) ripe plum tomatoes
1 mild red chili
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch scallions
100 ml (scant ½ cup) chopped fresh parsley (or cilantro)

dressing:
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

De-seed and chop the tomatoes and chili. Mince the garlic and slice the scallions finely. Mix together the ingredients for the dressing and combine with the chopped vegetables in a bowl. Sprinkle in the chopped herb of your choice and let stand in the fridge for a few hours before eating.