Somewhere in the late 80’s, early 90’s American’s discovered Panzanella. Funny since Italian women had been making it for centuries! And not just Italians, many other cultures have bread salads; the Arabic Fattouche is the first to come to mind. When I first discovered Panzanella I was captivated by it. I thought it was so exotic and cool and I tried many different configurations, toasting the bread, drying the bread, soaking the bread, using different kinds of olive oil, trying different kinds of vinegars, making it higher end with grilled prawns, or shaved ricotta salata, you name it. It was all good, but I took what was essentially a casual economical dish and tried to make it something it wasn’t, and in the end, nothing was as good as good ol’ panzanella!
My Mother, who as I’ve come to find out, was a genius and right about most things in life made her own panzanella almost every night. We had salad at least three to four times a week and after mom seasoned the salad she’d tuck a heel of French bread down into the bottom of the bowl and once we’d eaten all the salad Mom would saver that hunk of bread loaded with all the dressing and juices from the salad.
This week we found ourselves with too many tomatoes, I know it’s not tomato season, but they looked good and I was ready to embrace summer. Bob suggested I make panzanella with them which I threw together for lunch on Saturday. Panzanella is a throw together kind of salad, use whatever vegetables and bread you have around, but there should be three core ingredients bread, tomatoes, and fresh basil. After that, the choices are yours. This is my favorite way to enjoy this salad.
*½ loaf Semifreddi’s Ciabatta-cut into one inch chunks
5 ripe tomatoes, quartered, each quarter cut in half for eight pieces each
1 small cucumber cut into ½ inch pieces
½ C pitted Kalamata olives
4 large basil leaves chiffonade
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Worcestershire Sauce
Salt and Pepper
In a large bowl place the bread, tomatoes, cucumber, and olives. If you don’t know how to chiffonade the basil, take the four leaves, stack them on top of each other and roll them up tightly. Once rolled slice thinly with a sharp knife and you will end up with thin strips of basil, add to the salad ingredients. Generously season the salad to taste with olive oil and vinegar, add a couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Combine well, taste the bread to see if the seasonings are correct, adding more oil and/or vinegar as necessary. Let the salad sit at room temperature for about a half hour before eating it. Serves 4-6.
*Where I live we have a wonderful local bakery called Semifreddi’s. Their products are available at many of our supermarkets. I really like their Ciabatta-it has a wonderful chewy texture with large holes perfect for capturing the oil, vinegar, and tomato juice in this salad. If you don’t have similar bread where you live any Italian Country or French bread will do.
