Tuscan Panzanella is a salad made with stale unsalted bread from Tuscany, onion and tomatoes.
Its name could be a familiar short of the word panzana, a term used to indicate the usual meal: a way to say pap.
Further south in Italy, in Cilento, this salad of dried bread and vegetables is usually called Caponata or Caponatina and as bread are used the Friselle, those slices of toasted bread well known and available all over the eastern Mediterranean.
This type of preparation is now popular in most of the italian peninsula and, they told me also in the Sicilian province of Enna: each place has got time to create some local legend about its source.
In Lebanon and Palestine is very much liked a veggie salad, the Fatousha, made with Arab or pita bread, dried and broken.
Starting from the common ingredients, the dry bread, these recipes combine tomatoes, onions and cucumber with a number of different products that can be simple vegetables such as celery, fennel and peppers according to season, olives, various fragrant herbs and sometimes green salads, but also cheese, hard boiled eggs, canned tuna, anchovies, boiled fish (as in the Ligurian Cappon Magro) or even lobster (as in the Aragosta alla Catalana, recent recipe of the north of Sardinia).
We have detailed information about the Panzanella since 1500, because it is praised by Bronzino, Florentine painter of the Medici court, who in addition to painting was also loving to eat well and to write poetry. He left us this testimony:
[..] ma chi vuol trapassar sopra le stelle, /Di melodia, v’aggiunga olio e aceto / E’ntinga il pane e mangi a tira pelle.[..]
[..] Un insalata di cipolla trita /Colla porcellanetta e citriuoli /Vince ogni altro piacer di questa vita. /Questo trapassa l’amor de’ fagiuoli, / E d’amici, e di donne, che con essi /T’ammazzeresti per due boccon soli. /Considerate un po’ s’aggiungessi / Basilico e ruchetta, oh per averne /Non è contratto che non si facessi,[..]
[..] Anyone who wants to pass over the stars, / As melody, should add oil and vinegar, / Dip the bread and eat until he burst. [..] [..] A salad of chopped onion / Green Purslane and cucumbers / wins every other pleasure of this life. / It passes the love for beans, / for friends and women, so much that with them / you would fight for just two bites. / Imagine then, if you would add / basil and arugula, oh to have it / no contract would be impossible [..]
As you can see in this old recipe tomatoes are missing. (It's obvious because they were added only much more recently). But there are both cucumbers and onions and even a wild herb, the green purslane.
Bronzino even proposes to add arugula (rocket herb) and basil to make the salad more gorgeous.
Let's see now how to prepare the classic Panzanella:
Basic ingredients for 4 people: Stale Tuscan bread, 2 red but firm tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 cucumber, Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, few leaves of basil, salt.
Cut vegetables into small pieces and mix them in a large bowl with the dry bread crumbled or chopped into not too small chunks. Season with a teaspoon of vinegar, salt and good olive. Put the salad in the refrigerator. Just before serving, add basil leaves.
Its name could be a familiar short of the word panzana, a term used to indicate the usual meal: a way to say pap.
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| image from www.theblackfig.com |
Further south in Italy, in Cilento, this salad of dried bread and vegetables is usually called Caponata or Caponatina and as bread are used the Friselle, those slices of toasted bread well known and available all over the eastern Mediterranean.
This type of preparation is now popular in most of the italian peninsula and, they told me also in the Sicilian province of Enna: each place has got time to create some local legend about its source.
In Lebanon and Palestine is very much liked a veggie salad, the Fatousha, made with Arab or pita bread, dried and broken.
Starting from the common ingredients, the dry bread, these recipes combine tomatoes, onions and cucumber with a number of different products that can be simple vegetables such as celery, fennel and peppers according to season, olives, various fragrant herbs and sometimes green salads, but also cheese, hard boiled eggs, canned tuna, anchovies, boiled fish (as in the Ligurian Cappon Magro) or even lobster (as in the Aragosta alla Catalana, recent recipe of the north of Sardinia).
We have detailed information about the Panzanella since 1500, because it is praised by Bronzino, Florentine painter of the Medici court, who in addition to painting was also loving to eat well and to write poetry. He left us this testimony:
[..] ma chi vuol trapassar sopra le stelle, /Di melodia, v’aggiunga olio e aceto / E’ntinga il pane e mangi a tira pelle.[..]
[..] Un insalata di cipolla trita /Colla porcellanetta e citriuoli /Vince ogni altro piacer di questa vita. /Questo trapassa l’amor de’ fagiuoli, / E d’amici, e di donne, che con essi /T’ammazzeresti per due boccon soli. /Considerate un po’ s’aggiungessi / Basilico e ruchetta, oh per averne /Non è contratto che non si facessi,[..]
[..] Anyone who wants to pass over the stars, / As melody, should add oil and vinegar, / Dip the bread and eat until he burst. [..] [..] A salad of chopped onion / Green Purslane and cucumbers / wins every other pleasure of this life. / It passes the love for beans, / for friends and women, so much that with them / you would fight for just two bites. / Imagine then, if you would add / basil and arugula, oh to have it / no contract would be impossible [..]
As you can see in this old recipe tomatoes are missing. (It's obvious because they were added only much more recently). But there are both cucumbers and onions and even a wild herb, the green purslane.
Bronzino even proposes to add arugula (rocket herb) and basil to make the salad more gorgeous.
Let's see now how to prepare the classic Panzanella:
Basic ingredients for 4 people: Stale Tuscan bread, 2 red but firm tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 cucumber, Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, few leaves of basil, salt.
Cut vegetables into small pieces and mix them in a large bowl with the dry bread crumbled or chopped into not too small chunks. Season with a teaspoon of vinegar, salt and good olive. Put the salad in the refrigerator. Just before serving, add basil leaves.
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