As I prepare more Italian dishes, I continue to learn. While making this salad, I learned that panzanella (or panmolle) is a dish that stems from the Tuscan and Umbrian areas of Italy. It consists of soaked stale bread, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, oil, and vinegar. There are quite a few different arrangements, but the ingredients I just listed above are very common. While this salad stems from the two locales I listed above, it’s widely popular in much of Italy. It’s also most popular during the summer when many of the included vegetables are being harvested.
The Recipe
This recipe calls for day old Italian bread. I had a nice loaf of bread that wasn’t a day old, so I fried pieces of it in olive oil inside my cast iron skillet to make up for the lack of staleness. Doing that gave it the tasty crunch I was looking for. The crunch disappeared after I marinated the bread in the vinaigrette I prepared, but the flavors of the frying remained.
While the recipe I’m going to share below doesn’t follow the ultra traditional panzanella you’d find in Tuscany, it does touch upon the major notes. My recipe calls for scallions as opposed to onions. It includes garlic and anchovies and capers. It’s a delicious salad that’s quite unusual if you’ve never tried it before. This one takes a few minutes longer to prepare than your regular garden salad, but I encourage you to try it out. It’s very good.
I’d like to thank Carlo Bernasconi and Christian Teubner for this recipe. I pulled it from The Complete Italian Cookbook that they authored. Another great recipe from these two gentlemen.
Ingredients
Serves 4
1 Loaf of Italian Bread, Cut into ¾” Cubes
4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
½ Pound Plum Tomatoes, Coarsely Chopped
1 Cup Cucumber, Diced
2 Yellow Bull’s Horn Peppers, Sliced into Rings
For the Vinaigrette
3 Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
½ Teaspoon Salt
¼ Teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
6 Tablespoons Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
1 Garlic Clove, Minced
1 Tablespoon Fresh Parsley, Chopped
1 Tablespoon Capers
3 Scallions, Sliced into Rings
Also
Good Handful or Frisée Lettuce (Curly Endive)
8 Anchovy Fillets
Prep the Ingredients
Cut, mince, dice, and slice the scallions, garlic, tomatoes, cucumber, and peppers.
Prepare the Vinaigrette
In a medium sized bowl, add the vinegar, salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic, parsley, capers, and scallions.
Whisk these ingredients together well.
Toast the Croutons
Warm a large skillet over medium heat on your stovetop. Add the four tablespoons of olive oil and the cubed Italian bread. Allow the pieces of bread to toast so their outsides are crispy. Use a spoon to mix the bread up while it’s toasting. Also feel free to add a few pinches of salt as well.
Combine Ingredients
To a large bowl, add the croutons, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. Then add in the vinaigrette and gently toss the ingredients. Allow the bread to cool and the flavors to marinade for about 10 minutes. After that, add the lettuce and the anchovies. Toss again.
Plate & Serve
Finally, divide the salad between plates, serve, and enjoy!
Leave a Reply