 creepy caprese |  | | Well faaaancy! |
| Directions | Insalata caprese, an Italian classic, and somethin' too dang fancy for me but ya'll might like it becomes an instant Halloween classic as well.
The traditional ingredients for this salad are fresh mozzarella, basil, plum tomatoes and olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. My version goes only slightly further, adding a thin slice of olive as the garnish. And, a clever trick produces perfectly round pupils every time.
For your irises use green olives.
Also from the deli, pick up those little balls of fresh mozzarella.
Now, go find your paring knife.
Cut a thin, clean, round slice from the tip or side of one of the olives. This is a shallow cut, so it doesn't matter if the olive has a pit or not, but do try to make a nearly-circular slice.
And now to cut a perfectly round pupil. Use the end of a plastic drinking straw to cut a hole through the center of your olive disk. To do this, push down on the straw with a slight twisting motion. It will slice out a neat cylindrical core, which you may need to remove with a toothpick or similar instrument.
For the pupil we use a small disk of black olive. (We used pitted black olives. Feel free to substitute higher-grade dark olives, but this is a small enough application that you can get away with it.)
Here is the "clever" part: Use the same straw to poke a hole in a black olive to get a little plug of material that will exactly fit in the pupil hole of your green olive disk. Depending on your relative olive thickness, you may need to trim the back of the black plug as necessary.
Stick your olive irises to your mozzarella balls. Assuming that the surfaces are wet, they should stay in place by themselves. If your cheese is particularly curvy, you might find it helpful to cut a small flat surface for them to attach to.
Serve your eyeballs with tomatoes, basil, and olive oil. |
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|  | |  | | ingredients | | Olives, basil, mozzarella, tomato |
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