Green and orange tomato salad with plum and shallot dressing

Another day, another tomato. Or that's how it goes round here.

I didn't realise I came from a family so obsessed with tomato growing but it seems this is very much the case. All different varieties have found their way to my door over the last couple of months, by the sackful. Small juicy orange ones, stripy firm green ones, gigantic deep red heirlooms as big as melons, and the not so big, medium-sized heirlooms, then there's your standard classic tomato tragically ordinary; simple in colour and form, and last but not least the red cherry tom's there's hundreds of those, and, no, wait, there's one more, the occasional plum tomato if you're lucky and it's been a good week.

It would make sense to be bored of them all by now, but I can't, no matter how many times I eat another, the taste never fails to excite me. Home grown stuff continually amazes me as well. Having a good tomato can completely change a dish altogether and will put you off buying the standard supermarket ones for life. They lack flavour, you've heard that all before but it's so depressingly so.

The latest stars of the show have been the orange cherry tomatoes my Uncle gave me; Golden Gem Hybrid variety I think. They're like popping sweet little grapes - barely like eating a tomato at all. Even the tomato haters out there love these. So tasty, it seemed a shame to cook them and so we made this very simple, raw, sliced tomato salad that you should make with any good tomatoes you can get your hands on. It has a finely chopped plum and shallot dressing which lends itself well to the sweetness of the orange tomatoes. This is all counter-balanced by the firmness of the stripy green tiger tomatoes.


Dressing:
3 soft plums
1 small shallot
100ml red wine vinegar
50 ml olive oil
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
Salt and pepper to season

Salad:
2 firm tiger, striped green tomatoes
8 Golden Gem Hybrid cherry tomatoes

Finely chop the shallots and the plums and mix them together with the remaining dressing ingredients. Set aside for 30 minutes to properly soak the shallots in the oil and vinegar.

Remove stalks and fnely slice the green tomatoes and arrange on a large plate. Remove the stalks from the orange cherry tomatoes and half these. Scatter amongst the green tomatoes and dress it all in the dressing, add a drizzle more olive oil and a pinch more seasoning. The tomatoes speak for themselves here so there really is little more to do except eat.