California Caprese Salad

First make sure your basil is washed and trimmed so you only have the leaves. Pat the leaves dry with a paper towel and set to the side. I like to try and practice mise en place which is French for “everything in place.” It might make a little more work or an extra dirty dish or two but when everything is measured out, sliced up and ready to go then you just get to have fun and create! It keeps everything organized and will make it so that your cooking experience has a nice flow to it because everything is in place! Mise en Place!!

Next thing you need to do is slice up your cheese. You want it about .5″ thick. You want something sturdy enough to hold the tomato and avocado and thick enough to taste all the wonderful smokey flavor. But this is personal preference so if you find you like it thinner then by all means slice it that way!

Now slice up your Roma tomatoes – with the same thickness as your cheese, about 5″ to 1″ thick. Do the same thing with your avocados.

Place the cheese on a serving platter or plate. Place a tomato slice on top of each slice of cheese. Then top each tomato slice with a slice or chunk of avocado. Once this is done you want to do a sprinkle of salt and pepper over the top of your salads!

Once you have salt and peppered the salads it is time to top with a basil leaf. For the finale you are going to drizzle on some balsamic vinegar! My bottle did not do the drizzle I had hoped for so it was more of a dumping of vinegar! But that is OK – I just tipped the plate into the sink to drain out the excess vinegar. So if your drizzle experience does not go as planned c’est la vie!

To serve I toasted up a couple of pieces of French bread and cut them into bite size pieces and drizzled on a little olive oil and put those on a plate next to the California Caprese Salads. It was lovely having that toasted crusty bread to soak up the balsamic. It complemented the Caprese very well! I hope you try my version of this classic salad and let me know what you think! I promise you are going to love it!