precious panzanella
Panzanella, the cheerful name for an Italian leftover bread salad, sounds like the deliberate toss of ingredients at the height of summer, and with this year’s tomato blight, the dish is especially dear.
I tore the bread in pieces, cut an equal amount of very ripe tomato in similar sizes, minced a tablespoon of shallot, salted liberally (this draws the juice from the tomato) and left the flavors to marry in a bowl for half an hour. With a brisk stir, I added in the crumbled bacon and scissored baby leek on top, squeezing in a little lemon.
The transformed bread pillows taste of tomato and rounded shallot, pair well with an icy glass of Sancerre, and make for a meal that quietly rejoices in these flavors. (If you find a lemon cucumber at market, that’s a lovely addition.)
On Saturday, Evolutionary Organics at the Prospect Park Farmers’ Market had a table full of tomatoes in darker hues,
and another stand featured green gauge plums,
still another speckled squash,
and just outside the market, the Treats Truck (@thetreatstruck on Twitter) held wonderful Mexican chocolate brownies—this is a truck to seek out—that preceded a sweeter wafel with spekuloos,
as I explained to the Waffle Truck that the flowers in my market bag were for my talented work colleague Fil,
who was Golden Girl Dorothy that night in the Brooklyn Columbia Waterfront district. Here’s the first part of the pilot episode (the rest of the performance starts here):
And that preceded Calexico’s pork belly torta (waving is my boss Andrew, who is eating with his wife Jenni and baby Emilia, who was an excellent audience member and as in awe of Fil as we were)
and a Sunday of adventures that included dim sum, gastropods I couldn’t identify, a bit of drama at the Tenement Museum, long stretches of walking with a wonderful conversationalist, applied knowledge of appliances, and salted caramel ice cream in Fort Greene…
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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009, 5:52 am * Filed in brooklyn, flowers, Food, Market. * Tags: blight, farmers, kristen, kthread, Market, panzanella, taylor, tomato. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
The panzanella is beautiful and looks mouth-watering. The previous tenant of my apartment actually planted several heirloom tomato plants in the backyard. I will have to use them in a similar fashion!
August 13th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
The panzanella looks very refreshing. Nice job!
August 14th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Mica, what luck! Let us know how the panzanella turns out—
Danielle, thank you, it was just light enough for the weather and filling enough so I was too happy to cook anything to accompany—