Caprese Salad

Caprese salad is one of my favorite presentation dishes to make. It involves no cooking and little mess, but is packed with color and flavor. Again, I added my own spin to this classic dish, but this time it is mostly in the presentation. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

20 fresh basil leaves
20 cherry tomatoes
20 ciliegine or "cherry size" mozzarella balls
3 T extra virgin olive oil
3 T balsamic vinegar

Directions:

Arrange the basil leaves on a plate and place one cheese ball and one tomato inside each leaf. Once all the of the leaves are filled, drizzle the balsamic vinegar and olive oil on top. For best results, let it chill for about an hour. This will let the oil extract some of the fat-soluble flavors from the vinegar and really kick up the flavor.

In this version, I used heirloom grape tomatoes because they were available locally and added a little extra color, but you don't have to. Standard grape tomatoes work really well and get you a much more traditional Italian flag look.

Alternatively, you can serve these on skewers or toothpicks if you are hosting the kind of party where people will be doing a lot of moving around or if you want to make them beforehand and then travel with them.