Panzanella is a cold bread salad from Tuscany. It's a recipe I learned while studying in Italy. Sometimes it's made with just bread, tomatoes, and onions, but I added cucumbers and lettuce. Here's how to make it!! (It sounds kind of weird, but trust me, it's delicious and wonderful for hot summer days.)
You need:
about a pound of bread (you can find "Italian bread" at most grocery stores... this will work best) It's best if the bread is stale.
4 tomatoes (chopped)
1 medium red onion (sliced)
a lot of basil
1 cucumber
some lettuce
1/2 c. EVOO
1 cup white wine vinegar
black pepper
salt
Start by breaking the bread in chunks and then soaking it in 5 cups of cold water and a 1/2 cup of the vinegar for an hour. If the bread is fresh, reduce this to a half hour. Simultaneously soak the sliced onions in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of vinegar for a half an hour.
While those are soaking, chop your veggies!
Once the bread is soaked, squeeze it by hand (kinda gross i know) and then put it in the bowl that you want to serve the salad in.
Dress the bread with ample salt, even more pepper, the olive oil, and the remaining vinegar.
Add in your chopped vegetables and some lettuce as well. Drain your onions and mix those in too. Finally add some basil leaves. Mix it all up, breaking the bread into smaller pieces. I did this with my hands mostly (don't worry they were clean!), but you could do it with salad servers also.
Make sure you refrigerate this for at least an hour; you want it to be cold and fresh!
Once done, it should look something like this:
 |
| Put some basil leaves on top for presentation. |
No comments:
Post a Comment