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Welcome to the Taste Creations blog hop! On the first Monday of each month, my blogging friends and I get together to share recipes based on a certain theme or ingredient. Today, we’ve planned a Valentine’s Day dinner! Each blogger in our group has made a dish for a multi-course Valentine’s Day meal. A great Valentine’s Day meal starts out with a sweet and delicious appetizer, and that’s the part of the meal I’ve made!
Valentine’s Day Caprese Salad
I adore caprese salads, so I decided to make an extra cute Valentine’s Day caprese salad for my dish. A caprese salad is a classic Italian combination of fresh basil, mozzarella cheese and tomato.The salad includes the colors of the tricolour Italian flag – green, white and red. The salad is often topped with a glaze or dressing of balsamic vinegar. Yum! The best part about a Valentine’s Day caprese salad are the slices of heart-shaped mozzarella cheese.
Ingredients
Fresh mozzarella cheese
Fresh basil
Sliced fresh tomato
Balsamic dressing (I used a bottled balsamic dressing)
Tools/Materials
A trick to making this salad is knowing the size of your heart cookie cutter before leaving for the grocery store. Your ball of cheese has to be at least as wide as the widest part of your heart cookie cutter.
The hearts of mozzarella are made by cutting the ball of mozzarella into equal-sized slices and then cutting the slices with the cookie cutter.
Each cheese slice has to be big enough to fit the entire cookie cutter. (I did find one trick — if a particular slice is a little too small, you can gently flatten out the slice with your hand to make it a little bigger so you can accommodate the heart cookie cutter.)
I started my salad by first washing the tomatoes, and then the basil leaves, in the colander.
I then sliced the tomatoes into thin slices and cut out an equal number of mozzarella hearts. I topped each tomato slice with a mozzarella heart and a basil leaf and drizzled some balsamic dressing on top.
I served this salad when some friends visited about a week ago. Everyone loved it! It wasn’t Valentine’s Day yet, but it was nice to show my family’s friends how much they mean to us.
Check out the rest of the courses for the Valentine’s Day meal prepared by me and my blogging friends!
Vegetable Course Green Beans Almondine – Our Good Life
Main Course: Easy Italian Baked Shrimp – An Italian in My Kitchen
Dessert: Blood Orange Cupcakes with Blood Orange Frosting
Wow! I would love to have all of this for a V-Day special meal! I just love cypress salad and this V-Day take on it is so cute! Going to pin!
Carrie
curlycraftymom.com
I love this salad, looks like the perfect Valentine’s Day dinner idea.
Wow, such a neat blog-hop idea, and I love your appetizer! Great idea, and easy, too!
Julie Briones recently posted…Homestyle Gathering 4 | Your Homekeeping Destination
Oh, my! This all looks so good! I never ever thought to use cookie cutters with mozzarella!
What a fun blog hop! It’s a whole Valentine’s meal in one post! I love your little heart-shaped caprese salad. That’s one of my favorite appetizers!
Caprese salad is one of my favorites. Wonderful combination for a beautiful Valentine’s Day dinner.
Cute! I love Caprese salads. The heart idea is a fun Valentine’s Day take.
Some great recipes here and love the Valentine’s themed salad.