The way it should be done is as follows. Take two large, very ripe tomatoes, warmed all the way through on a sunny windowsill (not, for Christ’s sake, in a microwave). Using a sharp knife slice them thickly, perpendicular to the principal axis of the fruit. The angle of cut is critical; if you slice a tomato any other way, the pips and juice will fall away from the flesh and it’ll look a mess. Eat the first and last slices from each fruit as you work, leaving only those from the fattest part. Likewise slice a whole mozzarella cheese, sourced from Calabria and made from the milk of water buffaloes. Arrange the slices of tomato and mozzarella alternately, so as to form a circle, on a plain white plate. Take a large bunch of basil and tear a generous quantity of leaves into shreds. Scatter these over the salad. Do not succumb to the temptation to cut the basil with a knife. If you do so, you will cut through cell walls in the basil leaf, releasing the cytoplasm, and the flavour of the basil will be too dominant. Finally, trickle a little, very expensive olive oil over the whole. Consume.
I learned the trick with the basil while reading a compilation of Elizabeth David’s journalism ‘An Omelette and a Glass of Wine’. She in turn got it from the novelist Norman Douglas who was in the habit of going everywhere with a bunch of basil in his pocket. As an aside, I cannot resist quoting the last words of Norman Douglas, who died in 1952 on the island of Capri: ‘Get these fucking nuns away from me.’
