Bit of a pescetarian day today. Two of the lovely people we were camping with at Green Man are pescy (or as R’s mum calls it; Vegaquarium) and it may have rubbed off a little.
Also there is craploads of veg on the allotment ready to be eaten, and limited time to do it in.
Salad number 1 was the last recipe from the “Round the World” Barcelona section; Goats’ Cheese, Confit Tomatoes & Basil Oil. Sadly, we think it was also the most disappointing.
The yellow things are tomatoes we swear, it’s just Dan grew golden cherry tomatoes.
The recipe required us to cook the tomatoes in a basil/chilli/garlic infused oil, then blitz a huge pile of basil leaves with the oil. Then serve the whole lot with a pile of rocket and some goats’ cheese.
It was definitely the weakest recipe in the section.
Fortunately we had a big favourite for dinner. This is our take on Panzanella, an Italian bread salad.
We’ve tried a few different Panzanella salad recipes and this remains our absolute favourite. Although we generally serve it with tinned tuna we have tarted it up occasionally with tuna steaks to great success. It really is dependent on good tomatoes and good crusty bread. Fortunately we have a greenhouse full of vine-ripened tomatoes and I have a husband who will make one of these first thing in the morning.
To be honest I’d expected him to use the bread maker, but, yay, upgrade!
We’re halving our usual recipe to feed two so we’ll only be using 50g of the bread so expect to see more of it over this weekend.
The bread got torn into chucks and baked in a reasonably hot oven until golden. Once the bread was cool it got combined with 200g of ripe chopped tomatoes (home grown obviously), half a finely sliced red onion (also home grown), a quarter of a cucumber roughly chopped (look at Dan’s little smug face!), 25g Kalamata olive, half a tbsp. of capers and half a bunch of basil (we have a window sill full of basil).
Then we whisked together 2 tbsp each of olive oil and red wine vinegar, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of sugar before pouring it all over the salad, giving it a mix and abandoning it for an hour.
Just before serving we stirred in a can of tuna. We use tuna in brine, but admittedly this is partially for the love of the kitten. Bolly loves the brine we drain off.
A well deserved firm favourite.
thegreedyguineapig 