Thing Number Eighteen - Panzanella

This Tuscan bread-based salad is similar in concept (and execution) to Fattoush, but the flavours here are very definitely Italian.

The salad is left to sit for a while once you've made it, so it's important that the bread isn't going to dissolve into squish - you want something that had a bit of presence about it even before it went stale.  I used half a Pain de Campagne that's been hanging around for a few days.

Chop it into chunks and stick it in a bowl.

Next you want some tomatoes (for which the usual rules apply - they should be good ones, that taste of something other than red water).  You need about the same quantity as bread, or a bit more.  Chop them up too, and add them to the mix.  (Some recipes ask you to peel and de-seed them, and then press the juice out of the seeds in order to then put it back into the salad.  There's seriously no way I'm doing that.  I just chopped the tomatoes into the bowl so I wouldn't lose any of the juice.)

Now you need about half a cucumber.  Given that it's going to be sitting and seeping in dressing for a while, I did go to the (minimal) effort of removing the skin and seeds, just because I don't want it going squishy.

Slice the cucumber into little jade-green crescent-moons, and add them to the bowl.

Finely slice up some red onion (I only used about half an onion, because it was massive), and add that, too.

I used a handy jam-jar to mix up the dressing - a large glug of extra virgin olive oil, a smaller glug of red wine vinegar, and generous pinches of salt and sugar.  Shake them together (with the lid on, obviously.  Bit messy otherwise) and pour over the salad.

Rinse off a teaspoon or so of capers (I used baby ones purely because they came in a smaller jar and I was already a bit laden down so I didn't want to have to carry anything bigger home) and chuck them in.

Now rip up a handful of basil, and add that, as well.

Mix the whole lot together, cover with clingfilm, and leave it to sit and soak up flavours for at least half an hour, and preferably longer - several hours is good.  (Don't put it in the fridge.  Tomatoes never taste of anything when they come out of the fridge.)

The verdict

I was convinced this wasn't going to work.  I kept tasting bits while I was adding it and thinking things like 'the bread's too tough' and 'it's too vinegary' and I wasn't really looking forward to eating it, to be honest.  And then I did, and it turns out that the time it spends sitting and resting is basically a final magic ingredient that makes it all work.  It's really nice.  (Which is a good job, really, since there's loads left and I'll be eating it for lunch tomorrow).  I'm maybe very slightly fonder of Fattoush, but only just...