Ramp Caprese Salad

I don't serve raw tomatoes outside of the late summer season.  Every tomato I eat outside of August and September is just usually a major letdown for me.  I never order them at restaurants or buy them at the market.  People think I am a snot about this, but I just prefer to OD on tomatoes when they are at their best.

For Easter dinner, my mother had tomatoes, mozzarella and basil to use in a salad to start the meal.  I wanted nothing to do with it, to be honest.  But everyone gave me a hard time and told me to stop being a snot and just make the dish.  I brought some ramps home with me, so I added them to the Caprese-eque salad. 

I separate the whites from the greens on the ramps, as they have different cooking times.   When I pan roast them without separating them, the green tops get all brown and grey and lose some of their fresh, from the garden taste in my opinion.  So I pan roast the white bulbs in olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe a few spinkles of red chili flakes, with just a squeeze of lemon juice after removing from the heat (they only need about 2-3 minutes worth of cooking time on medium high heat).  I then quickly sautee the green tops in the same pan for only a minute or two, just until wilted but still vibrant green in color.

I layered the green tops of the ramps in between the tomato, basil and mozzarella slices, then added a few of the white bulbs on top to finish.   Some great olive oil and a few drops of aged balsamic I brought back from Modena a while back made me forget about the just OK tomatoes.  I guess.