Two Salt and Sugar Cured Tomato Salads

Keep this dish simple with just tomatoes, cherries, and pistachios, or add basil and/or crumbled goat cheese.

It’s also delicious with thinly sliced garden tomatoes and no cherries. Check out the tips at the bottom!

Ingredients

• Cherry tomatoes, halved
• Good quality fine sea salt or Redmond Real Salt
• Sugar
• Shelled pistachios
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Orange flower water
• Mild, fresh goat cheese, crumbled
• Slivered basil leaves

Directions

For cherry tomatoes:

1. Halve cherry tomatoes.
2. Toss halved tomatoes with a light sprinkle of each salt and sugar in a ceramic or glass dish. You should be able to taste both slightly.
3. Cure tomatoes for one hour.
4. Meanwhile, sauté the pistachios in the olive oil in a small pot over medium to medium-low heat until they lightly sizzle. Cool.

To Serve:

1. Sprinkle tomatoes with orange flower water and toss tomatoes with crumbled cheese and slivered basil to taste.
2. Add pistachios without the oil, toss, and place mixture in a serving dish.
3. Drizzle with the extra olive oil. The dish should be slightly “soupy.”

Ingredients

• Medium or large garden tomatoes, halved
• Good quality fine sea salt or Redmond Real Salt
• Sugar
• Shelled pistachios
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Orange blossom water

Directions

1. Slice tomatoes as thin as possible; ⅛ to ¼ inch is ideal.
2. In a large ceramic or glass dish such as a lasagne dish, lay out 1 layer of slices neatly without overlapping.
3. Season each slice carefully and lightly with salt and the tiniest pinch of sugar to quick-cure them. Build another layer on top and repeat the cure until you have stacked all of your tomato slices.
4. Cure tomatoes for one hour. Tomatoes will weep, so make sure your vessel has a rim to collect the “tears.”
5. Meanwhile, sauté the pistachios in the olive oil in a small pot over medium to medium-low heat until they lightly sizzle. Cool.

To Serve:

1. Arrange a neat, shingled circle of tomato slices in shallow bowls or a platter with a nice rim to keep juices in. 

2. Very sparingly splash some drops of orange blossom water over the tomatoes. You want to smell it and taste it but in a fleeting way. 

3. Scatter spoonfuls of fried pistachios on the tomatoes and then spoon the olive oil used to fry them in over the tomatoes and around the perimeter of the plate.