Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: the “panzanella”

giugno 24, 2009

Breakfast is universally acknowledged as one of the main meals of the day: milk, coffee, fruit juices, cookies, brioches, and maybe yoghurt, home made jam and, why not, some pizza.

This is nowadays breakfast. In the past, when my grandma was a little child, it was totally different. They used to have panzanella (Tuscan bread salad) for breakfast. I love panzanella, because it’s refreshing, light and good, a summer dish… for lunch or dinner, not for breakfast!

Panzanella was summer breakfast, made with leftover bread. During the winter, they used to have polenta to start the day in a glorious way! It used to be audult people’s breakfast, grandma used to have milk instead – since they had a cow and a goat in the farm. Men who went to work in the fields at dawn made the panzanella in a lunch box and brought it with them in a basket. When breakfast time came, they used to eat the panzanella drinking some home made red wine.

Nowadays, panzanella is a refreshing first course to have in those first summer days.

Ingredients:

• stale Tuscan* bread, 300gr
• ripe tomatoes, 2
• Certaldo onion, 1
• basil, a lot
• salt
• extravirgin olive oil
• white vinegar

* Tuscan bread is made without salt, this is the main characteristic of our bread!

Break the bread into large pieces, put it in a large bowl and soak it with water, without dipping it into the water. They used to make panzanella with leftover home made baked bread: it had a very different and better flavour and took a lot of time to soak up.

Slice thinly the onion and drown it in cold water, to shade its strong taste. We used Certaldo onion, a round, sweet, juicy and light violet onion. Dice the tomatoes.

After 10 minutes, when the bread is soft, squeeze it, crumble it with your hands, put it in a large bowl and flavour with onion, tomato and basil, torn roughly with your hand.

Season with salt and plenty of extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkle with some white vinegar. In the past, as my grandma says, it used to be real wine vinegar, very good and light, as regards white vinegar. Don’t use the red one, or it will redden the bread! If you desire a very light vinegar, you can use also apple vinegar.

Set aside for half an hour, then it’s ready to be eaten!

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You should be interested also in:

1. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: tomato-bread soup
2. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: bread soup
3. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: Onion Omelette
4. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: stewed French beans
5. Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: tomato eggs

Posted in Family recipes, First course, Tuscan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes