Tomato Peach Salad

This week's Summer Fest is all about tomatoes.  I thought long and hard about what tomato recipe I could share - I have so many  favorite ways of eating tomatoes, but very few actually written down or codified.  One of my favorite events of each summer is the first tomato sandwich:  some sort of nice white bread toasted, mayonaise, heirloom tomato, salt, pepper.  Super simple and super delicous.  Or, there is my favorite sweet tomato chutney - but that is actually long, hot and complicated, so I'll save that one for later.   

It's finally been hot here in NYC - August hot.  Humid, sweaty and smelly.  That means I've been cooking a lot less and just making salads or simple dinners of toast and cheese for dinner at home.  Since I've been working in an office near Union Square, I've been able to shop for food the way I like to - just picking up a few things that I'll need in the two days until the next market happens - rather than doing a big shopping trip once a week and lugging tons of bags home.  I've been getting lots of peaches, carrots, zucchini and radishes.  Sunday afternoon, I ventured on to the NYTimes site for the 101 Simple Salads article to get some inspiration.  I remembered seeing something about a tomato peach or tomato watermelon salad, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  The recipe called for tomatoes and either peaches or watermelon, a simple vinagrette and basil.  I didn't have any basil on hand, but I did have some mint, so I used this as a starting point and mixed it with the basics from my favorite watermelon salad and made a tasty peach tomato salad:

Tomato Peach Salad

2 ripe tomotoes, cut into chunks
3 ripe peaches, cut into chunks (I left the skins on)
1/3 cup feta cheese
1/2 cup chopped mint
Fresh ground pepper

Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl and prepare the dressing:

Basic Vinagrette
2 T white wine vinegar
1 T balsamic vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 T pistachio oil (this is kind of difficult to find - but it is amazing oil if you can find it.  If you don't have it, sub olive oil)
4 T olive oil
Salt

Whisk together, taste for salt.  Pour half over salad - you may not use all of the dressing - toss and taste before adding more.  Grind fresh pepper and toss again.

Comments

[darya]

Looks delicious!! Here is my tip on how to get tomatoes home from the farmers market without squishing them :)

Transporting soft fruits and vegetables

[darya]

Oops, that link didn't work. Here it is:
http://summertomato.com/farmers-market-update-how-to-transport-soft-fruits-and-vegetables/

[Chef Gwen]

Tomatoes and peaches. What a lovely combination. I'm not sure I've ever tried that, but I happen to have 1 peach and 1 tomato left in the fridge. So I think I'll just go try this.

I did a tricked out but easy tomato sandwich. Gave it a fancy name, too.

http://penandfork.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/heirloom-tomato-napoleon/