Caprese Salad & Pesto Sandwich

I was inspired to make this sandwich because I'm always looking to add more vegetarian options to my diet, and I had a mid-winter craving for some simple summer food.

I made some pesto this past summer, but instead of basil leaves, I used garlic scapes (the flowering part of the garlic plant). It added a lot of flavor to the pesto, like a garlic-buttery taste. The pesto freezes excellently, so this summer I'm going to make sure to stock up on plenty of garlic scapes. (I got mine from the excellent farmers at Meadow's Mirth, which is an excellent organic farm if you're in the area.)

Anyway, I haven't used up much of my pesto this winter. I spent a good portion of the summer freezing my vegetables and sauces so that I would have something to cheer me up in the winter, but instead I have a whole freezer of great food that I haven't used yet.


Originally, I wanted to use ciabatta rolls, but the local supermarket has excellent onion rolls and the extra flavor went really well with the caprese salad. I also bought some small tomatoes and a roll of mozzarella cheese. I sliced a few thick slices of each, spread some thawed pesto sauce on my onion roll, and stacked the tomato on top of the mozzarella.

The sandwich turned out really well. The oil from the pesto soaked into the bread, and the tomato and mozzarella didn't get squished out of the sandwich when I was eating it. This is a nice sandwich to prepare for a bag lunch. I just sliced up some mozzarella and tomatoes ahead of time, put a few slices in a tupperware container, put a little pesto in small container, and bagged up a sliced roll. (I know refrigerating tomatoes takes a lot of the flavor out, but the pesto I used was flavorful enough to make up for it.)

This sandwich was definitely a refreshing change from my usual turkey-and-cheese. And now I can finally start to whittle away at my frozen leftovers!