ROAST TOMATO, EGG AND SALAMI SALAD
My brother Karl lives in Sydney with his wife Kim and kids Ryan, Emma, and Georgia. For several years after he left New Zealand he took a "journey" that included hanging out in some really cool places and testing the limits of his mind and body in ways that looked like a path of serious self-destruction. Actually he was just another Kiwi bloke who knew how to have a damn good time!
Anyway, he now lives a "normal" life, is a sales manager for a major drug company (gee, go figure!), and I am always delighted to hang out with him and the family on layovers in Sydney — particularly when he is cooking, which I’m thinking is damn near all the time.
Master of the barbeque (I think it’s a prerequisite for Australian citizenship), he also excels at turning out (seemingly with ease) all manner of tasty dishes.
One that I just had to take home with me was this salad. A meal on its own it’s great hot, but I think it’s totally awesome if it spends the night in the fridge and served cold; the ingredients get time to hang out together and, well you know….
Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Total cooking time: 30 minutes
Serves 6 (or 2 very hungry large blokes)
Ingredients:
12 Roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 bulb of garlic, cloves separated and peeled
1 teaspoon fine sea salt flakes
8 eggs, hard-boiled and quartered
100g (3¼ oz) marinated black olives
50g (1¾ oz) spicy salami, sliced into thin strips
3 spring onions, chopped reasonably fine
2 tablespoons of shredded basil leaves
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Put the tomato halves and the garlic cloves onto a baking tray, sprinkle with the sea salt and some cracked black pepper and bake for 30 minutes, or until you think it’s all good and tender.
Arrange the tomato halves on a serving platter in whatever manner pleases you. Top with the garlic, hard-boiled eggs, olives, salami, spring onion and the basil.
Drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the salad.
Enjoy, accompanied by your beverage of choice.
As with all recipes this one allows a lot of leeway with the ingredients and the quantities to create something that is one’s own.
For example you could use any cooked meat, chopped, chunked or sliced, but it’s been my experience that it’s got to be something spicy; the salad will be a little bland otherwise. Also I took a shortcut and found a bottle of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil at my local supermarket that worked well.
Can’t find sea salt? Well guess what, the stuff in the cupboard’s just fine. And that little can of olives looked, well too damned little? Make that a couple of handfuls then!
