Revenge of the day-old bread



When I get the urge to make this summery salad, heaven help me if there’s no old bread handy. I'll hang around the kitchen, staring down at the poor fresh loaf until that precise moment when it is officially on its last legs and I can fall on it and begin tearing it limb from limb--or at least into casual one-inch cubes.

Panzanella is its mellifluous name (and a great name for a cartoon princess, don't you think?), though I prefer the more modest sonics of “Bread Salad.” We had it the other night with HA and V at Diner, a place in Brooklyn that I’d just like to step out and call my favorite restaurant in the city. Ha! Whenever I catch myself talking about my favorite things, I feel like my 10-year-old self again, compiling lists of favorite colors, practicing my signature, and resolving once and for all The Question of Which New Kid on the Block is, in Fact, The Cutest. A quick look at my profile will reveal that I haven’t exactly gotten over this tendency.

But, back to the salad. Yesterday morning I realized that there was half a crusty loaf of bread on the counter, so after teaching, I hauled myself down to the Union Square green market and shelled out way too much money on heirloom tomatoes—fine, if you must know, a shocking $10. Lined up like fat toddlers waiting to be adopted, they were impossible to resist, and I had fun selecting tomato after tomato--the more mishapen and odd the better.

Back home, it took only a few minutes to throw together the salad. We ate it with white wine and miniature farm-fresh strawberries, the latter also purchased in Union Square but at another stand operated by a grim teenage farmer, who accepted my $3.00 skeptically, as if he wasn’t sure he trusted me with his produce. The strawberries look like the kind you see embroidered prettily with leaves and flowers on kitchen curtains, or the ones I remember fondly from this childhood book. Suffice it to say, a single teeny one had more flavor than a bucket of the ordinary kind. Without thinking, I happily exclaimed to Justin, "These strawberries are so small, they're practically the size of berries!" He turned away very slowly, perhaps wistfully thinking what it might be like to be married to a smart person.

Scroll down here for a basic recipe for Bread Salad, which you can adapt as you like. We threw in fresh mozzarella and extra sea salt. Other recipes call for capers, olives or bacon, but that sounded too complex; we wanted to keep it bright--like one of those long, mid-summer evenings.

Buon appetito!