I'm actually glad you asked
Tomatoes are prepared in 3 ways in the salad - roasted, fried, and raw. It was really yummy. We actually opted to save the main part of the meal until later in the evening and polished of the salad.
8 Italian Roma tomatoes,, cut in half
2 tablespoons olive oil
Cajun seasoning, salt, pepper to taste (or salt, pepper, oregano, red pepper if you cannot find any cajun seasoning)
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons chiffonade of basil
1 or 2 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 small red onion, julienned
Salt and pepper
1 beef steak tomato,, cut into 6 slices
1 yellow beef steak tomato,, cut into 6 slices
8 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese
4 cups assorted baby greens
4 fried breaded green tomatoes, for top of salad
Toss the Roma tomatoes with the olive oil and season with seasonings. Place the tomatoes, seed side down, on a baking sheet and roast for about 8-10 minutes at 400. Remove from the oven and cool.
Julienne the roasted tomatoes.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil and red onion together. Add the julienned tomatoes.
Season the vinaigrette with salt and pepper.
Season each side of the tomato slices with salt and pepper.
Season each side of the mozzarella slices with salt and pepper.
Toss the greens with 2/3 of the vinaigrette. Reserve the remaining dressing. Alternate layering the tomatoes, cheese and greens.
Garnish each salad with the fried breaded green tomato, remaining vinaigrette.
The only things that I did differently was to use cherry tomatoes instead of the roma's for roasting as I had a bunch and I used 2 heirloom tomatoes (one yellow, one purple) and a store bought red tomato for the slices. I also left all the greens at the bottom and just layered the tomatoes, dressing and cheese.
But then the biggest difference. We had had fried green tomatoes the day prior so I had 2 large "heels" of tomato so instead of frying more slices I cubed it up and breaded it (standard 3 bowl process 1. seasoned flour 2. beaten egg 3. cracker meal and herbs) and fried it up like fried green tomato croutons.
