There have been a couple of new additions to my bucket list this week, with one of them being ‘do a foodie tour across Italy’.
You see, as much as I wholeheartedly love Greek food, to me the Italians do it with more finesse, variation, and most importantly, wine. And this Panzanella recipe is a great place to commence.
I’m going to start my Italian food journey by taking my dad on a birthday Italian cookery course soon (what? He couldn’t go alone!), and until then I have some Burrata (which I would rather not ruin with our bland British tomatoes so I’m thinking about using it on a pizza) and a handful of Italian-inspired recipes to tide me over.
I used one of these for a Panzanella recipe when my Mother-in-Law came for dinner last week, which I served with a couple of other salads and some grilled meat. It’s never particularly easy to cook and parent at the same time so I prefer to make quick, easy recipes that can take a bit of standing around in case we have to make an emergency trip to the park.
Or to bed for a nap.
This Panzanella recipe requires an amount of standing time so it’s perfect for a prepare-ahead dinner.
It’s an easy, pretty, colourful, summery salad that you could eat on its own for lunch, or accompany it with grilled meats, a green salad and some rosemary roast potatoes for dinner.
Delicioso!
Panzanella
The dish is traditionally made with stale bread, but I oven-bake mine to crisp it up. Another – slightly naughtier – idea is to fry off the bread in Olive Oil. But I couldn’t possibly condone such behaviour.
- 3 cloves garlic (crushed and finely chopped)
- 1 large (mild chilli, chopped finely)
- 600 g ripe tomatoes (preferably organic, roughly chopped)
- 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tsp sugar
- 100 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 de-seeded red pepper (roughly chopped)
- half large cucumber
- 4 thick slices bread
- small bunch basil
- If you are baking your bread, break it into chunks and bake in the oven on a medium heat until golden brown.
- Stir together the garlic, chilli and a pinch of salt. Add the sugar and vinegar, mix, and turn into a large salad bowl. Add the olive oil and stir in.
- Prepare and add all salad ingredients to the bowl.
- Stir in bread chunks.
- Tear herb leaves over and season with salt and pepper; leave to stand for at least 30 minutes before serving, stirring through a couple of times.
