Vegan Tomato Salad With Black Garlic Croutons
Let's make vegan tomato salad with black garlic, fancy tomatoes, pine nuts – and some leftovers and stale bread!
Servings 4 people
Ingredients
Tomato Bread Cream:
- 1 kg ripe tomatoes feel free to use older uglier ones, as well as the leftovers of the tomatoes you cut for the rest of this recipe, roughly chopped
- 70 g stale bread crust removed
- 2 sprigs thyme
- 2 sprigs rosemary
- 2 shallots sliced thin
- 50 g white wine vinegar
- 100 g white wine
- salt
- pinch of fennel seeds
- 1 dry chili
- olive oil
Black Garlic Croutons:
- 1 stale bread roll use the crusts left over from the tomato cream recipe
- 2 cloves black garlic minced
- salt
- olive oil
Dressing:
- 25 pine nuts toasted
- 20 white wine vinegar
- 25 white balsamic
- salt
- 1 clove black garlic
- 150 olive oil
To Assemble:
- a variety of as many different tomatoes as you can get sliced horizontally.
- ½ fennel shaved thin
- fennel fronds the fuzzy green part
- basil leaves
- chili sliced (optional)
- flaky salt
Instructions
Tomato Bread Cream:
- In a shallow pot, toast the chili and fennel seeds. Add olive oil, shallot, rosemary, thyme and a bit of salt. Deglaze with white wine and white wine vinegar, reduce until almost completely evaporated.Working with high heat, add the tomatoes and salt, in 2-3 batches. You want them to get a direct heat and really liquify rather than steam. After about 3 minutes, once all the tomatoes are broken down, add the bread, let it cook down and reduce for about 20 minutes. Pass through a fine sieve.*Passing is more labor intensive than pureeing, but the result is much creamier and lighter and has a cleaner flavour, so we really recommend you go through with it.
Black Garlic Croutons:
- Mix bread and smashed black garlic, toast in the oven at 160 degrees until golden brown and dry, about 10 minutes.
Dressing:
- Blend all together. Done!
To Assemble:
- Spread a thin layer of the tomato-bread-cream on the bottom of a large plate. Arrange layers of sliced tomatoes, fennel, chili and croutons, carefully drizzle dressing and sprinkle some flaky salt after each layer (not too much dressing!)