Idea

For the first recipe on a cooking blog, this is going to involve very little cooking. Zero. In fact, the stove will not be turned on. Yes I'm being a bit of a contrarian, but more importantly, I thought this would make for a good introduction as to why this blog is more than just another recipe library.

I'm not a huge tomato person. I don't like them in sandwiches, and I can only make so much tomato-egg stir fry. However when I saw these heirloom ones at the farmers market, I couldn't pass them up and grabbed several of the heaviest feeling ones. I wanted to do something simple as possible to highlight the flavor of the tomatoes. This is a less-involved caprese salad basically.

Principles

Less is More

• Fairly self explanatory, there are only 4 ingredients here and 3 are to highlight the flavor of the tomatoes. The quality of the tomatoes will make or break this.

Techniques

Salt is not Just Seasoning

Ingredients

Recipe

Step 1: Get the best in-season tomatoes you can. Discerning readers may say 'Nov is not tomato season'. While correct, this was not put together in Nov.

Step 2: Cut them, salt relatively generously, and leave to sit to draw out the tomato juices from their cells. Note: don't go overboard with the salt as it still ends up in the final dish, but use more than you think you need. Pretend you're salting the equivalent volume of a normal vegetable as there is tomato.

Step 3: After at least 30 minutes, so the salt has drawn out the tomato juices, put the tomatoes on a plate. Mix good olive oil with the juices, and pour over tomatoes. Garnish with fresh black pepper and flaky salt. If you don't have flaky salt, skip it. Serve with bread.