- Now Panzanella Salad is a beautiful Italian bread
and tomato salad with a light citrus dressing.
The trouble is sometimes it can get soggy
but not this time.
I have just the trick for the perfect texture and flavor.
I'm Suzy with themediterraneandish.com.
Let's make some Panzanella.
(cool music)
Of course one of the star ingredients here is bread.
Use any artisan day old bread you have.
I'm just using Ciabatta bread today,
just a half of a loaf here or about five to six ounces,
and we're gonna cube this bread.
Just do your best to kind of keep the bread pieces
similar in shape and size.
From here, we're gonna season this bread a little bit
and give it some extra virgin olive oil
to help it toast just right in my oven.
I have my oven on at 400 degrees
and I'm going to drizzle a really generous amount
of extra virgin olive oil and toss this bread together
with a little bit of kosher salt
and this is what will help the bread toast,
gain some color.
I'm not looking for it to get hard in the oven.
I just want some texture on the outside
and still good chew on the inside.
So toss it and then
we're gonna transfer to my pan right here.
Okay, this will go in the oven now.
Now some Panzanella Salad will use other veggies.
I'm just really relying on my tomatoes
and then I'm using a little bit of shallots .
So any tomato you have at home is great.
If you have a variety like heirloom tomatoes
when they're in season,
they are gorgeous and different colors.
So you could use that as well.
I'm just using on the vine tomatoes here
and what I'd like to do
is cut them into wedges like you see here.
so I'm gonna put them in this colander.
This is a great use in the summertime
when you have really tasty tomatoes
Now if you ended up using cherry tomatoes
or a grape tomatoes or something, you know, smaller tomato,
you still want to cut the tomatoes
because you want the juice from the tomato
to land in this bowl and begin creating
the dressing that we're gonna make for this salad.
We're gonna hit our tomatoes up with some kosher salt,
and we're gonna kind of let them sweat,
kind of let them do their thing
and release some of their juices
and we're caught up some shallots.
So shallots are a milder onion,
but if you don't have them,
red onions will work.
You might just use a little bit less.
Some people will add cucumbers
to their Panzanella.
That would be fine too if you have some.
We're gonna kind of cut a slice like so.
In my dressing, I like to add a couple fresh garlic cloves
two the three and we'll just make our dressing
right in this bowl where our tomatoes
are kind of releasing their juices.
Mince the garlic as finely as you can, no big deal.
And I'm smelling the bread.
So it must be kind of almost ready.
You don't want it to get it too crunchy.
This is looking nice and crispy
a little bit but not too much nice and golden.
This is exactly what I want my bread
to look like for Panzanella.
And the tomatoes are doing a good job
releasing their juices right here you guys.
Check this out.
We are in business.
So I'm gonna set the tomatoes aside for now
while I use this bowl to create my dressing.
So obviously the tomato juice is in.
Then we have red wine vinegar.
This is essential for Panzanella
and then a good amount of a quality extra virgin olive oil.
I'm using my early harvest extra virgin olive oil.
You can find it on themediterraneandish.com.
Just hit the shop tab about a good
third to a half a cup of extra virgin olive oil.
Remember this is a salad that just is juicy and tangy.
So you need a good bit of this.
Next we're going to have a little bit of Dijon Mustard,
a tiny tiny bit like half a teaspoon, not a whole lot.
There we go.
And now we have our fresh garlic that we minced.
(cool music)
Okay, salt and pepper.
And I have some fresh thyme which is totally optional,
but I absolutely love just a little bit
of an herby taste to my salad here.
And we're gonna whisk this baby together.
All right,
this is looking great.
So now we're just gonna put our tomatoes in here.
Bread goes in.
Fresh basil.
You can tear the basil
or you can just punch it up like so
and give it a quick chop.
We're gonna put that in here.
We've got our shallots.
And then this is not traditional
to panzanella, but I like to add some fresh mozzarella.
So we mix all this together.
And now the key to this salad
is you want to let it sit for a few minutes
so that your bread will catch
all the flavors from the beautiful dressing.
So just make sure that you coat everything
and as you leave that to sit for a few minutes,
make sure that you toast it around some more
so that all the bread will be nice and so.
And I'm about to serve it with my Italian baked chicken
in just a minute.
If you haven't seen the video,
definitely check that out goes great with the salad.
And that's it you guys.
Grab the recipe for this Panzanella Salad
over on themediterraneandish.com.
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