Panzanella
This Tuscan salad is a great way of using up stale bread as well as a glut of tomatoes from the garden. There are many versions of this dish, but I'm sharing with you my simple version ensuring the current loaf of sourdough doesn't go to waste.
Servings: 4 side dish
Calories: 415kcal
Ingredients
- 2 red peppers see below note
- 1/2 stale loaf of sourdough 3-4 days old
- 500 g mixed tomatoes
- 2 anchovy fillets
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 garlic clove
- 100 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp capers
- 1 small red onion
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1 handful of fresh basil leaves
Instructions
- Preheat the grill and place the red peppers in a tray under the grill. Turn regularly to char all sides and starting to blister. Alternatively, you can do this on a gas ring. Whichever method you choose, you cannot leave them alone and should keep a close eye on them. Both methods should take around 10 minutes.
- When blackened almost all over, put the peppers in a sealed plastic bag, or covered bowl, to allow them to steam and cool for 10 minutes. You can now skin them, remove the seeds and cut them into 1cm strips - catching any juices from the inside of the peppers.
- Take your sourdough, or similar bread, remove the crusts and cut roughly into 2cm pieces. If your bread isn't stale enough, now is the time to pop it on a baking tray in the oven for 5-10 minutes to dry it out.
- While the peppers are cooling, you can make the dressing. Taking half of the tomatoes - use the larger ones for the dressing, keeping the smaller ones aside that will go into the salad whole - score the skins with a cross on the base, place them in a bowl, and submerge them in boiling water for 1 minute. Carefully remove them and peel off their skins. If the tomatoes are ripe this should be pretty easy.
- I use a small plastic board for this, which is easy to clean in the dishwasher, and placing the anchovy fillets on the board I scrape them in a circular motion with the flat side of the knife. Doing this a few times will create an anchovy paste. To this I add 1/2 tsp sea salt and chop and crush the garlic clove into the anchovy paste.
- In a large mixing bowl add the anchovy and garlic paste, squeeze in the skinned tomatoes, ensuring you get a lot of pulp and juice. Add the olive oil, red wine vinegar and capers and mix everything together well.
- Add the stale bread cubes and the grilled pepper slices and give everything a good mix. You want the bread to soak up all the beautiful tomato juices along with the flavours of the dressing.
- Peel, halve and slice your red onion. Cut the cucumber in half and de-seed using a teaspoon then slice roughly and add this to the mixing bowl with the crushed tomatoes and dressing.
- Finally, roughly chop up the remaining mix of tomatoes, and together with a handful of basil leaves, throw this into the mixing bowl and season well with freshly ground black pepper. Give everything a really good mix.
- As this is a messy business, I now normally tip this into a presentation bowl ready for the table.
Notes
If you are short on time, you can always use a jar of roasted red peppers as a quick alternative. Although you do lose the texture of the fresh roasted pepper, but maintain that roasted pepper flavour.
Nutrition
Calories: 415kcal | Carbohydrates: 42g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 25g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 17g | Cholesterol: 1mg | Sodium: 659mg | Potassium: 594mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 2939IU | Vitamin C: 97mg | Calcium: 63mg | Iron: 3mg