Panzanella

Last Saturday was this absolutely beautiful day. The kind of day when you spring out of bed and think, "I'm going to go to the farmer's market carrying my eco-tote and wearing my $700.00 dollar sandals and I'll walk home with a bunch of flowers and a baguette sticking picturesquely out of the bag and then come home to my charmingly rustic apartment and whip up some wonderful summer dish that is easy, with simple flavors, which I will then enjoy whilst sitting next to my flowers (which I just stuck in a blue enameled milk pitcher) and reading the New York Review of Books."

Needless to say, I don't have $700.00 sandals, so the whole plan was a bust. And I didn't make it down to the farmer's market but instead down to the sort of half-assed version we have next to the Kip's Bay movie theater. And when I got back to my apartment, it looked like several rhesus monkeys had been holding soccer tryouts there the night before. So I just shoved all my tomatoes in the fridge and resumed my life of lowered expectations.

But tonight I figured I'd better eat them, and so made this, which I love because it's basically a deconstructed sandwich. Or deconstructed brucchetta. It's the kind of dish that is completely uninterested in your blue enameled pitcher. It has no time to be faux rustic. It's too busy being bread salad.



Panzenella

1 loaf crusty bread
5 ripe tomatoes
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon capers
1 cup of basil leaves
Good olive oil
Red wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 250F. Cut about six pieces of bread in 1" thick slices. Place on a baking sheet and bake for around 20 minutes, until lightly crispy. You could also just use stale bread, which I have a feeling was the original ingredient.

Chop your tomatoes into chunks and put into a bowl. Mince garlic clove and add to tomatoes. Rinse capers if they're salted, and then mince and add to tomatoes. (I always mince my capers. I guess you don't have to.)



Tear your basil leaves into shreds and add to tomatoes. Sprinkle all with a hefty pinch of salt, a good grind or six of pepper, stir, and let sit for around twenty minutes, just to let the flavors blend.


Combine olive oil and red wine vinegar in a small bowl, whisk together (I don't know how much, but roughly 4-1 oil to vinegar) and pour over tomatoes. Don't drown it; there should be a lot of good juice from the tomatoes already on the bottom of the bowl. Cut your bread slices into cubes. Gently mix the cubes of bread into the salad.

This does NOT keep. In fact, this barely lasts an hour. Of course, there isn't any point in making it if you don't have really, really good tomatoes, which, even if you do not have, as I do not, $700.00 sandals, a blue enameled pitcher, a subscription to the New York Review of Books (thank god) and a charmingly rustic apartment, are readily available at a stand outside a movie theater on 2nd Avenue every Saturday until the first frost.