This was inspired by Jamie Oliver’s new book, Jamie Does… from the Spanish part of his journey.
He calls his…. ‘Best Chorizo and Tomato Salad in the World‘. As I didn’t follow his instructions exactly I guess mine will have to be ‘2nd best Chorizo and Tomato Salad ’!
Its essence - a dressed tomato and onion salad with fried slice chorizo. Jamie’s recipe uses raw chorizo, roughly sliced, fried in olive oil to which, when the chorizo is crispy, sliced garlic is added. He recommends to keep moving the garlic around the pan to prevent it burning - and as soon as the garlicky smell is at its most tantalising – take the pan off the heat and pour in a splash of sherry vinegar to stop it cooking further.
I didn’t use raw chorizo as I couldn’t find it in the supermarket. So used precooked instead. And when I thought it was being taken off to to be wrapped it was in fact being uniformly sliced into wafer thin discs. Which meant when it came to frying I decided I’d skip the garlic for fear of everything getting burnt. And with just a quick session in the pan the little discs crisped up quite nicely.
I did splash out on a bottle of sherry vinegar swept along by Jamie’s promise that it ‘ will transform your dressings’ . I’m hoping the next few weeks will see the start of a lot of tomato salad moments so if ever there was a time for transformation it’s now ( and maybe I was a little stung in case his assertion that ‘ so many people live their lives eating the most boring tomato salads and there’s no need to!’ included me, so new summer, new crop, new dressings it is !)
As for quantities I worked on what I thought would work per person which was 75g of chorizo, 3 generous tomatoes and half a shallot.
And then I:
- Cut the tomatoes into chunky wedges
- Very finely chopped the shallot
- Put the tomatoes and shallot in a large bowl and tossed them together with olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper
- Fried the sliced chorizo in olive oil till nice and crispy then added it to the tomato and shallot salad
- And then transferred the salad into individual bowls, scattered basil leaves and heaped torn hunks of bread on the side. For as delightful as this salad is – the world’s best bit is the moppy up, juicy bits at the bottom
Delicious – as is the book. Lots of beautiful photos of people, places and food. I’m staying at home this summer tomato tending but might just ‘make’ a few more stop offs round Europe with Jamie.
