Old-Fashioned Tomato Salad by Nigella Lawson

Old-Fashioned Tomato Salad
by Nigella Lawson
from Forever Summer
(Hyperion, 2003)
Serves 6

This tomato salad is all you need for a summer starter. What I do is take the tomatoes out into the garden, uncut, on a flat plate or two, for an hour before I want to make the salad: it takes any chill off them and makes them taste somehow more tomatoey. Cherry tomatoes perhaps sound newfangled rather than old-fashioned, but I'm coming to that. For the dressing is, and I refuse to apologize for it, nothing more nor less than that great — though, now that we live in the extra-virgin age, greatly discredited — item from the English culinary canon, Salad Cream. The recipe I give for it is by and large adapted from Margaret Costa: I have substituted tarragon vinegar, which I prefer here, but do use cider vinegar, as she stipulates, if you want. Any leftover salad cream can be stored in the refrigerator in an old jam jar; indeed you may find you want to make double the amount below, so well will it go down.

It's hardly English, but I use pasta flour (available at supermarkets now) instead of all-purpose flour because it loses its flouriness with less cooking, but it's not worth losing sleep over.


convert		Ingredients
1/4 teaspoon		reconstituted English mustard or pinch mustard powder
1 heaping tablespoon		pasta or all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon		granulated sugar
		Salt and black pepper
		1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk
1		egg, beaten
4 tablespoons		tarragon vinegar
1 tablespoon		sunflower oil
18 ounces		good cherry tomatoes, halved
		Chives or green parts of scallions

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Method

1. Half fill a sink with cold water.

2. Combine the mustard, flour and sugar, with about a teaspoon of salt and a good grinding of pepper, in a heavy-based saucepan. Add a little of the milk and stir to mix to a smooth paste, then put on a gentle heat and keep adding the milk, and stirring as you do so. I find my immersion blender the best thing to banish lumpiness here, but it's not a difficult operation whatever you use.

3. When all the milk's in, add the beaten egg and vinegar and keep on whisking until it's beginning to thicken. When the mixture's got the texture of light cream, whisk in the oil then plunge the pan in the sink of cold water and continue whisking for a while.

4. When it's cool (you can pour into a bowl then put the bowl over ice if you want speedy cooling), cut the tomatoes in half and arrange on one huge plate or two fairly large ones. Drizzle a few spoonfuls over (don't drench: think Jackson Pollock) then add some chopped scallions or chives. Unexpected heaven.

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