Stone Fruit Caprese Salad

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Plums, nectarines, and peaches are ruling every grocery store shelf, and I am powerless before them. I cannot help but buy them. And naturally, if I buy them I have to eat them. So I’ve been putting stone fruit in just about everything from sandwiches to stir fries to BBQ sauce and beyond, no dish is off limits. These dishes can be elaborate or remarkably easy like today’s Stone Fruit Caprese Salad, which is admittedly a more complicated version of a famously simple salad. What can I say? I am who I am.

It feels like everything is in season right now because well, pretty much everything is. The shelves at my local, excellent grocery store are literally bursting with every juicy fruit you can imagine and heirloom vegetables with all their visual eccentricities on full display. Whenever I enter a grocery store at this time of the year, I leave with a problem. I go into a sort of fugue state, blindly buying all the enticing and sadly perishable beauties that catch my eye. I emerge, arms laden with enough produce to feed a small village. And I dutifully cart it all home to my two-person household. There is indeed a major problem here. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking – it’s canning season. Process that beautiful produce and turn it into jams, jellies, pickles, and sauces. This is the fate for many of the goodies I’ve been bringing home lately. But after you put up the fourth jar of local pickled banana peppers, you start to wonder “How many pickles are too many.” Plus, and this is controversial, there are some fruits and veggies that I enjoy at their peak. Plums for instance. I love plums but I have to say plum jam is not always, well, my jam. So inevitably I wind up adding extra special produce guest stars to recipes I already have in my rotation. And today’s Stone Fruit Caprese has not one, not two, but three such guest stars – peaches, plums, and watermelon radish.

I realize the Caprese salad is one of those dishes you really shouldn’t screw with. Why? Because it’s perfect full-stop. Its beauty is in its simplicity; its poetry is in the quality of the ingredients you use. It’s peak tomato season, buffalo mozzarella is plentiful, and basil plants everywhere have come into their own. A Caprese salad should want for nothing right now. It doesn’t need any flourish or interlopers. And yet, it’s just hard to say no to a rainbow on a plate and that is exactly what this Stone Fruit Caprese Salad is.

This salad starts with a whole lot of chopping. Yeah, I know. But I promise it’s worth the elbow grease. Grab a couple of shallots and slice them nice and thin. Pile them into a bowl and cover them with white balsamic vinegar. Set them aside to pickle while you prep everything else.

Thinly slice a peach, a red plum, and a large handful of cherry tomatoes. You can use any variety of tomatoes you like. I do find the little ones fit in with the peach and plum slices a little better. Next, grab a mandolin and your courage and slice a watermelon radish. Go slow and use a safety glove if you have one. I wouldn’t slice something small and difficult to grip without one. Now, we’re on the home stretch, coarsely chop a couple of heads of baby gem lettuce. And that’s your chopping done! See? It wasn’t so bad.

Now, let’s tackle the dressing. Mince a clove of garlic and add it to some olive oil. Grab the shallots you set aside earlier. They should have softened slightly and turned a shade of hot pink. Drain the vinegar from the shallots and add it to the olive oil. Stir in a little salt and whisk to combine. Pile the lettuce into a large bowl and add the shallots. Spoon the dressing over the lettuce, using only as much as you need. This dressing recipe will make a sizable amount, so taste as you dress to reach your ideal dressing-to-lettuce ratio. Toss everything together to coat. 

Now for the fun part, building the plate. You can plate this beauty any way you like. But of course, I’m going to attempt to persuade you to plate it the way I did. Why? Because I think it’s pretty. Start with a small pile of the lettuce you dressed earlier. Place it a little off-center on the plate, we have to make room for our kaleidoscope of fruits and veggies. Place a smallish ball of burrata on top of the lettuce. Arrange the peach, plum, radish, tomato slices, and fresh basil leaves in a semi-circle around the burrata. Finish the plate with fresh ground pepper and some additional basil leaves and you’re done! This plate will comfortably feed two people. Or you can eat by yourself. I won’t tell.

And that’s everything you need to know about this Stone Fruit Caprese Salad. A fresh sweet, tart, and tangy take on the classic Italian starter. 

Enjoy!