The tomato edit : alfresco dining
We love tomatoes here at Charlie & Ivy’s, so much so that we decided to make them the theme for our next edit. We also wanted to focus on alfresco dining, as the summer sun has been out in full force!
Tomato tablescaping
To create our tablescape, we focused on simple linens and just decorated with some tomatoes and some lovely decorative tins from Bowley & Jackson. They are a North Yorkshire-based home and garden store, selling a range of hand-picked, beautifully designed pieces. The tomato themed tins were perfect!
Serving up
Our tomatoes themselves were from the wonderful Isle of Wight Tomatoes. Grown in the fertile soil of the Arreton Valley on the Isle of Wight, their tomatoes are fragrant, flavourful and delicious. They combine age-old traditions with modern day innovation to grow over 40 varieties every year. We used a mixture of sizes, colours and varieties both to serve and to decorate the table.
dressing up
To plate the tomatoes, we simply added a burrata and a generous pour of our Smoked Chilli Dressing. Now with a slightly spicier recipe, this dressing adds a punch of flavour to any dish and is perfect as a marinade in barbecue season. We especially love it over avocado toast, and tomatoes of course!
drink pairings
We paired our tomato salad with a spiced Bloody Mary, using a fantastic mix from The Pickle House, hand-crafted on their farm in Suffolk. Their Spiced Tomato Mix has added pickle juice, giving a delicious umami flavour. To make it boozy, we added a shot of Small Batch Vodka from Generation Distillers, a gin and vodka distillery based in Sussex. Wonderfully smooth, it’s double distilled and filtered through carbon for a super clean finish, the perfect addition to any cocktail! We garnished our drinks with some multicoloured tomatoes on a cocktail skewer.