The Real Thing

Have you had an heirloom tomato yet? If not, track one down, cut it, sprinkle with a little salt (preferably sea salt) and enjoy the taste of summer. Heirloom tomatoes are the real thing--grown from tomato seeds that have not been engineered to create the perfectly round, red, tasteless thing you find in the supermarket. Heirlooms are knobby with crazy color variation--in a word ugly--but they taste like real tomatoes.

We picked up a couple of beautifully ugly heirlooms and made a quick bruschetta. I combined the diced heirlooms with some basil, EVOO, salt and pepper and a touch of garlic and served the mixture on top of toasted slices of French baguette that I brushed with EVOO and rubbed with garlic.

To go with the bruschetta, I made some kebabs. Almost any meat and veggie combo will work on kebabs, the key is to cut everything into chucks that will cook at the same rate.