Heirloom Tomato and Goat Cheese Salad

Café Boulud Cookbook: Recipe 3

Made this back on July 22 and it was not a recipe to repeat.  For something as simple as tomatoes and goat cheese with a pesto vinaigrette, it was way too fussy.  Had the recipe been straightforward this could have worked.  Instead, Boulud has you marinating the tomatoes in a pesto.  But this pesto is thick and terrible, really.  Had the pesto been the simple basil, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil variety then all might have been well.  In addition to the pesto, you throw parsley and oregano into the salad, which is not necessary as the herbs add little to nothing.  This was a complete flunker and I think even the worst cook could have put together a more successful version of this salad by just using common sense.  Please note that I photographed the salad before adding the goat cheese.  The goat cheese covered a lot of the salad and it is easy to imagine what goat cheese would look like on this.