The Panzanella is a dish of the Tuscan popular tradition, made with few and simple ingredients. The basic ingredient are tomato and stale bread, so it is a recipe for reuse and recovery. This avoids waste in the kitchen. You need few ingredients, simple but good! Choose the best ingredients to make your Panzanella, as I do.
Our garden is offering us generous cucumbers, the first tomatoes, beautiful sweet onions and basil at will. I just have to add to this fresh and organic vegetable some stale bread, the good one that Gaia and Walter cook every week in the wood oven. Than I add some parfumes: salt, pepper, oil and vinegar and are I’m ready to prepare my simple but tasty panzanella.
Panzanella is a dish that I often do because it is perfect both as an started and as a main course. Especially during hot summers it is an excellent alternative to pasta, in fact it is a quick recipe to prepare and it is served fresh. Surely those of you who in summer suffer the heat in front of the stove like me, surely understand me! Often you can also find panzanella in the restaurant among starter or as an appetizer among the aperitifs. I like to serve it as startet with some Camaiorese Pepper pie.
Ingredients:
4 slices of stale bread
10 ripe tomatoes
1 sweet red onion
1 cucumber
basil
salt
vinegar
oil
Method:
First I put the bread to soak in water for about 1 hour and then I drain and squeeze it. I break it in pieces and I put it in the salad bowl. At this point I clean, peel and cut the cucumber, onion, tomatoes and basil into small pieces. I add everything in the salad bowl and season with salt pepper (optional) oil and vinegar. I let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. The more it rests the more the flavors are mixed and the better the Panzanella will be. That’s done and I did not even turn on the stove to cook! Buon appetito!
P.S. To make your dish more tasty and complete I suggest you to add cannellini beans, which adds a protein component to the dish, making it truly a perfect dish for a hot summer day. You can also prepare it the night and then bring it to the beach the day after. Remember to bring it in the cooler bag to enjoy your healthy and balanced meal lying comfortably under the umbrella on the beach.
