Panzanella
It’s true that the simple things are best.
This Tuscan salad is so satisfying and bursting with bright flavours, you can add feta and black olives for more of a Greek vibe but it’s fantastic as it is. It’s perfect for using up ends of loaves (not your plastic bread but the real deal, like sourdough) and improves if left to develop for 20-30 mins. You can even toast the bread slightly or lightly fry it in extra virgin olive oil, and rub it with garlic.
I actually don’t measure anything, I just throw in what looks right!
- Prep: 5-10 mins
- Cook: –
- Servings: 1
Ingredients
- 90g of real bread, torn into chunks, I use sourdough (a few days old)
- 1 ripe beef tomato chopped into bitesize irregular chunks
- about 2 inches of cucumber chopped into bitesize chunks
- half a small red onion, thinly sliced
- a few basil leaves
- 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar or white balsamic vinegar
- sea salt to taste
- cracked black pepper to taste
- clove of garlic if you’d like to rub the bread with it – optional
Nuush clients: Please apply the portion sizes stated in your account and divide the recipe so that you make only as much you need.
Instructions
Simply combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, leave to stand for 20 mins (optional), transfer to a serving dish and enjoy! By all means lightly toast the bread or fry it in extra virgin olive oil, and rub, with garlic, if you fancy.
Nutrition Info
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are rich in lycopene which is a pokey antioxidant. Antioxidants are like bouncers at a night club, they go around finding stray electrons that are busy causing trouble in your body, and find them a love partner so they can both stay in and cuddle on the sofa.
Tomatoes are also a brilliant source of vitamin C, which supports skin and connective tissue health as well as immunity and iron absorption. The biotin in tomatoes is good for controlling blood sugar.
Cucumber
Cucumber falls into the same family as melon and is a good source of flavonoids, vitamin K and molybdenum. Molybdenum, acts like a catalyst to many processes that take place in the body, such as the action of certain enzymes – a spark plug if you will. With its skin kept on it’s also a good source of fibre to nourish your vitally important gut microbes.
Sourdough bread
Sourdough bread is more easily digestible and more sustaining than mass-produced ‘Chorleywood’ bread. It uses natural yeasts, grown in a culture of flour and water and its slow ferment time means your gut is spared the fermentation. Its chewiness and density mean it takes longer to break down and gives far less of a blood sugar spike than highly processed breads. Its lack of additives such as emulsifiers makes it kinder and less inflammatory.
Sourdough bread contains over thirty strains of beneficial bacteria and yeasts which help the gut to build and maintain healthy bacteria. It’s a natural probiotic food – the gut is our second brain and strongly influences overall health.
Find your new natural
There is no technique, there is just a way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?
Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
Portion Guidelines
Instead of living with the bore of weighing food, counting points or calories and tapping everything you eat into a phone you can use nature’s custom-designed tool – your hands!
