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It’s a banner year for tomatoes in the northeast and I have red ones — both large and small — pinkish ones that are sort of heart shaped, plums, green striped ones, and canary yellow ones. The voracious woodchucks and chipmunks (I watched a little Alvin wrestle a tomato off a plant on my deck, roll it across to the stairs, and then snag it in his mouth like a toddler carrying a giant beach ball) are feasting to their hearts’ content and there is still a surplus.

An Experimental Mixture

Some unexpected company for a casual dinner gave me an opportunity to experiment, to use up some odds and ends in the fridge, and to invade the tomato surplus.

Aside from my tomato abundance, I had a big bowl of ripe peaches from the farmers market, lots of basil growing on the deck, and a hunk of feta cheese.

Do Things That Grow Together Go Together?

I had read somewhere that things that grow during the same growing season go together. Now that may or may not be true, but why not try peaches and tomatoes together?

To go with a roasted chicken I picked up at the market (of course I know I could have grilled some cutlets, but sometimes a shortcut or two is a sanity saver), I made an absolutely delicious tomato, peach, feta and basil salad.

Tomato, Peach, Feta, And Basil Salad

I did not use any precise measurements although the chopped amounts of tomatoes and peaches looked about the same.

Ingredients:

Equal amounts of tomatoes and ripe peaches
Crumbled feta cheese to taste
Fresh basil to taste
Salt
Balsamic vinegar

1. Core and seed the tomatoes.

2. Chop tomatoes into bite sized pieces salt them and let them drain

3. Remove peach pits and chop into bite sized pieces about the same size as the tomatoes

4. Make a chiffonade of basil (cut into thin strips)

5. Mix everything together

6. Add the crumbled feta

7. Mix again

8. Correct the salt and add balsamic vinegar if desired

9. Serve at room temperature

10.Refrigerate any leftovers which are great the next day as a type of tomato/peach salsa on fish, chicken, sandwiches or anything else you can think of.

Finish Dinner With Blueberries

The perfect — and easy end to such a simple and delicious dinner was the blueberry buckle I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I had blueberries from the farmers market, too, so I used those, bit I could have combined blueberries and peaches or other berries or stone fruit, too.

SocialDieter Tip:

Roasted chicken; tomato, peach, and feta salad; and blueberry buckle add up to a rather low calorie, low fat meal especially if you have the chicken without the skin, use fat free feta in the salad, and skim milk and decreased amounts of sugar and butter in the blueberry buckle recipe. Delicious, nutritious, low in calories, and easy.

A Tuscan Specialty: Bread And Tomato Salad

Rustic dishes often withstand the test of time — usually because they are easy, make use of local ingredients, and they’re good. Recipes for the same dish are usually not identical – they are adjusted for the hand that makes them and the tongues that eat them — but they consistently have at least one common central ingredient. They are dishes that are usually the result of necessity – the local crop, hard winters, what the land and surrounding environment yield, how they stand up to cooking and/or lack of refrigeration. In most cases they are peasant dishes: frugal, hearty, and delicious.

Panzanella is a bread and tomato salad (with some other ingredients) that is popular in Tuscany, other regions of Italy, and other parts of the world where the main ingredients: crusty bread, tomatoes, olive oil, onions, basil – are commonplace. Typically, the bread is two day to a week old unsalted Tuscan bread – originally, and still, a great way to make use of hard-as-a-rock leftover bread and extra tomatoes, with very tasty results.

In The Bar-Ucci Kitchen With Paola

When I was standing in the little café near our rented villa in Tuscany, I started up an interesting mixed Italian/English conversation with, Paola, the very amiable café owner of Bar-Ucci, the café/wine bar in the village square. She speaks Italian, I speak English, and much to my surprise, I found myself thinking in Greek (still don’t have an explanation for that). She being Italian, and me, Greek, it is safe to say that a whole lot of communication was through waving of the hands and facial expression. We understood each other with no problem.

She invited me into the tiny kitchen behind the café to watch the morning preparation of Panzanella.

Some Leftover Crusty Bread, Ripe Tomatoes, Luscious Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Bright Green Basil, Onions, And A Few More Ingredients . . .

Even though Panzanella is a very rustic dish, it is essential that all of the ingredients be of the best quality. The bread is stale, but if it is supermarket, spongy, and pale, it ends up as a soggy and yucky mess. Lacking access to unsalted Tuscan loaves you can use any good quality crusty loaf. I happen to love olives in any way shape or form, so I’m itching to try combining kalamata olive bread mixed with another crusty variety.

Use the ripest, juiciest tomatoes, the freshest basil, and the best quality extra virgin olive oil available. As with the farro salad I have already written about, Paola, with waving hands punctuating her point, emphasized that extra virgin olive oil was the most important ingredient. Easy to say when you live surrounded by olive trees with a gigantic olive press housed in a medieval stone building just across the square. To her, the fabulous bread, vine ripened tomatoes, and awesome bright green basil are not luxury foods – they’re simply the components of breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing that I found really different, and that I don’t love (because I go for crunchy and chewy), is that she soaked her bread in water first, squeezed out any excess drop she could, discarded the center, then tore the crust into pieces. Other recipes just use torn stale bread, without soaking, or even oven toasted bread or torn bread pan fried in olive oil.

You Can Make It A Dinner Salad, Too

Panzanella is totally accepting of a whole array of extra ingredients. With the addition of some protein, it can be a fantastic summer dinner salad.

I have made panzanella before, and I love to add tuna and some crumbled blue cheese or feta along with tomatoes and basil from my garden. For anyone looking for a way to use up the end of season overflow of tomatoes, this is an ideal way to do it.

Some people also add hard boiled eggs, celery, anchovies, hard cheese, and capers, to name a few possibilities. As long as you stick to the basics of bread, tomatoes, onion, basil, salt, vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil, add whatever you like (you can even leave out the onions if you want – although I personally consider that heresy!). It’ll taste great and on top of it all, be a healthy, nutritious meal.

Paola’s Panzanella: No measurements, just eyeballed

Crusty bread soaked in water
Chopped,cored, seeded tomatoes
Cucumber, halved, sliced, seeded
Thinly sliced red onion
Basil, torn into pieces
Salt, pepper, wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil

Remove bread from water, discard inside, squeeze out as much water as possible, tear crust into pieces and put in a big bowl

Add tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions to taste

Add salt, pepper, oil to taste

Refrigerate for one hour

Adjust seasonings, if necessary, before serving

Heap into a serving bowl or on a plate and garnish with basil leaves

Check out other Panzanella recipes at:

Epicurious

Alton Brown, Good Eats, Food Network

Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa, Food Network

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