Ultimate Salad: Caprese

My absolute all time favorite salad without any doubt is a traditional caprese salad. It is by far the easiest salad to prepare, impossible to mess up and is good in any season (even though it is suggested to be only a summer salad).
It requires 5 ingredients (plus salt and pepper) and takes approximately 5 minutes to prepare. However, it is very important that you have a good quality mozzarella (buffalo mozzarella is the ultimate but very hard to find) and a good quality olive oil. You want the tomatoes to be as fresh as possible and the basil leaves must also be fresh or it won't have the same zip. Thinly slice the tomatoes and the mozzarella, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and top with basil leaves, salt and pepper. If you want to be fancy you can stack it and it you want to be super fancy add thin slices of prosciutto in between each layer. 

And if you want to make it into little appetizer bites for a party, you can use cherry tomatoes, little mozzarella balls and basil leaves and put them on a toothpick. In this case, pre-marinate the tomatoes and mozzarella balls in the olive oil and balsamic so when you skewer them they won't be dripping and will be easy to eat!