I have been meaning to try a panzanella salad for a while but I never seem to have the old crusty bread when I think about it. A panzanella salad is a salad that includes bread that is typically old and crusty. I had a Greek salad earlier in the week and I still had all of the ingredients on hand. I thought that a Greek panzanella salad would be pretty good. The bread was pretty stale and I wanted it to soften up a bit so I threw it in a bowl and mixed in the tomato so that the bread absorbed all of the tomatoes juice. The salad turned out pretty good. The bread really soaked up the dressing and ended up being pretty flavourful. I will definitely be thinking of a panzanella salad the next time I have some bread that is getting stale.
Greek Panzanella Salad
Prep Time: 30 minutes Cook Time: 5 minutes Total Time: 35 minutes Servings: 3
ingredients
- 1 cup crusty old bread (broken into bite sized pieces)
- 1 tomato (diced)
- 1/2 cucumber (chopped)
- 1 tablespoon red onion (sliced)
- 1 handful sun dried black olives
- 1 tablespoon feta cheese (crumbled)
- 1/2 tablespoon olive oil (I used the oil from the sun dried black olives package)
- 1/2 tablespoon red wine vinegar (or lemon juice)
- 1 dash oregano
- 1 teaspoon parsley (chopped)
- salt and pepper to taste
directions
- Mix the bread and tomato in a bowl with your hands to get the bread to absorb the tomato juice.
- Add the cucumber, red onion and olives.
- Top with the crumbled feta.
- Mix the oil, vinegar, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper and pour on the salad.
I really love how the bread absorbs all the juices in this salad.
This sounds just wonderful!
What kind of olives i should use for salads/kalamon or…/? Is there a difference between the sorts and what kind is better for cooking?
Martin Jordan: I like to use Kalamata olives or sun dried black olives in salads. I have cooked with both the basic stuffed green olives and the Kalamata olives with success.
Thank you Kevin, i’m doing the same:) Especially the sun dried olives are very good to add in the caramelized onion. In Greece they have too many kinds of olives, that’s why i’m asking.
Martin Jordan: I was just in Greece on vacation and I got to walk through a street market. There were a few olive vendors and they each had dozens of varieties of olives. I could not read the labels on any of them but it sure would have been nice to be able to sample them all. 🙂
How far in advance can I make this?
I would make it fairly close to when you serve it, within an hour. You want the bread to start to absorb the flavours and juices but not get soggy.