Let Food be your Medicine: Recipe For Panzanella
This used to be a real “peasant dish”: it was
made from all the left overs in the house. The
stale and hard bread was softened in salty
water and crumbled over the salad. The bread
would “expand” with the water, making it
heavier and more filling in the stomach, hence
the name “Panzanella”, from the slang word for
“belly”, “panza”. This is also the reason why
there is no meat or fish in this salad, as that
would have been too expensive. On the other
hand, fresh vegetables were cheap and readily available and olive oil was
always a staple, so a salad was always an option.
This is not the case anymore and I recently saw a bowl of Panzanella in a
Locavore store; it’s now a delicacy!
The beauty is that you can change the ingredients to suit your taste and can
chop the veg any way you like. The bread needs to be soaked in salty water
for a few seconds and then drained.
Ingredients:
stale, hard bread (baguettes or
ciabatta, old sliced bread will do)
cherry tomatoes
cucumbers
celery
red onion
red or yellow pepper
green or black olives
basil leaves
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
balsamic vinegar or wine vinegar
Giovanna Franklin
4