We took the photo above at the Terrace Restaurant at Mission Hill Family Estates Winery (missionhillwinery.com) in Kelowna, British Columbia. The property sits at the northern end of the Okanagan Valley, where Canada grows some of its best table wines and a lot of astonishing fruits and vegetables. Before it was wine country, it was peach and cherry orchard country and those stone fruits still thrive there. In more recent years, Okanagan farmers have expanded their row crops as well. Some of the best cherry tomatoes we’re ever tasted were grown in the Okanagan.

This tiny salad of fire-peeled cherry tomatoes, blueberries, prosciutto, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and paper-thin sourdough toasts was an amuse bouche at Terrace. It’s seasoned with a couple of dots of balsamic vinegar. The chef cuts an X on the bottom of each tomato then extends the cuts to the stem. Using a surgically sharp blade, he or she then cuts an equator on the tomatoes, dipping them for a few seconds in boiling water before plunging them into an icewater bath. The skins peel up toward the stem in a beautiful way.

Neat trick, eh? We’re swimming in cherry tomatoes right now, which we usually just pop in our mouths or use for a fresh, just barely cooked sauce. Perhaps revisiting this beautiful dish will inspire us to try something more elegant.