Ripe off the vine

Use fresh local tomatoes for crispy tomato salad

Even though fresh local tomatoes start popping up at the market in July, they don’t really hit their peak until August — and that’s when I get happy. The tomato is absolutely my favorite vegetable (even if it’s technically a berry). This crispy tomato salad combines cooked tomatoes and raw tomatoes, the large guys and the small guys. You can call it a medley but I think of it as a party.

Before we start to cook these fellas, let’s take a minute to talk about buying and storing them. How do you know if a tomato is worth buying? Fragrance is everything. Out-of-season supermarket tomatoes have zero aroma. If you put your nose to the stem of a given specimen and it smells like a tomato, you’re home free. As for color, a tomato doesn’t have to be red from top to bottom to be good to go; it continues to ripen after it’s been picked from the vine. How to store them? Put your tomatoes on the counter out of the sun. Don’t refrigerate them. It will kill their taste.

I like to maximize the flavor of a ripe tomato by using a salt soak. After you’ve sliced your tomato, sprinkle it with salt and let it drain for at least 20 minutes. Salt not only pulls out excess water, it also intensifies the tomato essence. I salt my tomatoes this way before adding them to any salad.

This recipe is my take on Fried Green Tomatoes, a classic of Southern cuisine. The standard recipe features unripe tomatoes coated in cornmeal and deep-fried. Here we’re working with ripe tomatoes, not green ones, and sauteing them, not frying them. How ripe is ripe? Not so ripe that they’ve gone soft. You want them to be firm. The ripe ones hold together better when cooked.

The salad is finished with a simple buttermilk dressing made with mayonnaise, buttermilk, garlic and fresh herbs. Which herbs? I’ve suggested a mix of tarragon, parsley and chives, but the tomato goes equally well with just about any herb under the sun, so feel free to sub in your own favorites.

SARA MOULTON VIA AP This crispy tomato salad with buttermilk ranch dressing is from a recipe by Sara Moulton.