Spicy Tomato Salad - The Perfect Summer Dish

Written By Xinzhu Zhou

Spicy tomato salad - vine-ripened tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil leaves, fig jam, hot chilly oil, olive oil, black pepper grind, and salt.

I never liked tomatoes growing up. The texture of the tomatoes I had access to in Sichuan, China felt strange; the leathery skin, and the monotonous flesh of the fruit that was neither juicy nor crunchy, made the thought of biting into a fresh tomato unappealing. The flavor - bland. The sensation after eating a tomato - this tingling sting on my tongue and the inside of my cheeks - unpleasant. Tomatoes felt like an inferior version of cucumbers. I even hated ketchup - it reminded me of its real-life model too much for me to enjoy it unsuspiciously. On a broader scale, tomatoes’ popularity was also limited in Chinese cuisines. In my probably very biased perception, there are two more common applications of tomatoes in modern Chinese dishes: one is eggs with tomatoes, a stir-fried homemade dish typically enjoyed with rice; another is sliced tomatoes (yes, just tomatoes) with cane sugars toppings, as a dessert salad, though its popularity had most likely peaked in my grandparents’ generation when any dish would be called a dessert if a morsel of sugar is sprinkled in.

My relationship with tomatoes has taken a long evolutionary journey since I’ve had exposure with more tomato-centric cuisines once I’ve lived in America. Dishes with cooked tomatoes or tomato sauce were the first points of entry - margherita pizza, ragù pasta, goulash, salsa, just to name a few. Raw tomatoes in big chunks, on the other hand, remained inhibitory to me for many years. If I had to make a salad, I would replace the use of tomatoes with sweeter fruits such as grapes or crunchier veggies such as grilled zucchini. That is, until my ripe age of 32 when I tasted a basket of GREAT cherry tomatoes grown and sold at Wilson Farm, Lexington, MA.

Those cherry tomatoes were perfectly juicy, sweet, refreshing, and an explosion of umami. I was not into tomatoes enough then to have the habit of taking note of the variety, but I remembered the green and viny look of the tomato skin. I turned around and sampled their other tomatoes - yellow cherry, heirloom, roma, and I was blown away. I felt a burst of joy - that something delicious that has existed so long before me and will continue to stay for the foreseeable future was just waiting for me to discover whenever I was ready. It was a beautiful blind date that ended up being a life-long commitment.

Once I have opened my eyes to tomatoes as a cornerstone ingredient, I began to experiment with using tomatoes in various salad preparations. One iteration I like particularly is my Spicy Tomato Salad. It is super simple - swap the balsamic vinegar used in a Caprese salad with fig jam and crispy chilly oil, and viola.

The inspiration behind the origin? Well, necessity. Not every Asian household stocks balsamic vinegar, but the tried-and-true sweet and sour combination is key to the creation and can be achieved with a variety of ingredients and seasonings. The additional of hot chili oil, a mildly spicy kind, heightens the sensation and highlights the umami from the tomatoes and the Mozzarella cheese. Freshly picked basil leaves adds that herbal layer to the already summery dish. Yum.

Ingredients and quantities:

  • Vine-ripened tomatoes: 3, sliced

  • Mozzarella cheese: 1 ball, unsliced

  • Basil leaves: 4 cut to thin threads, 2 whole leaves

  • Fig jam: 2 tablespoons, or adjust based on your preference for sweetness

  • Hot chilly oil: 1 tablespoon

  • Olive oil: a (generous) dash

  • Black pepper grind: a pinch

  • Salt: a pinch

Hot chili oil and fig jam, the seasonings that make the dish.

If you are like me and tend to use a generous amount of olive oil in the salad, don’t fret - save what is left in the plate and enjoy the sweet, sour, savory, and spicy sauce with some bread. If you’d like to make the salad into a proper lunch / dinner, enjoy it with a glass of wine - I opted for a full-bodied glass of red that I opened the day before. Or pair with sparkling / Chardonnay for a more refreshing, fruity experience.

Spicy tomato salad with a glass of Spanish wine (Campo Viejo, Rioja).

Now that my balcony has planted basil on unlimited supply and three tomato seedlings in growth, I shall enjoy many, many tomato-forward salads in the summer. What a happy thought.

Xinzhu Zhou