Panzanella

As promised, I'm going to tell you all about making panzanella salad today. Panzanella is a traditional Florentine salad, based on two ingredients: tomatoes and bread. "Bread!?" you say! I know, bread in a salad is a pretty foreign concept, but trust me on this one. This makes for a lovely summer salad, and is pretty simple to prepare for a BBQ or gathering. I know it's not summer yet (trust me, I know!) but I needed something refreshing and cool to complement the ribollita that I wrote about yesterday.

For Jamie Oliver's version of panzanella, I needed to roast 4 red and yellow peppers. So, the first thing I did was preheat the broiler and place the peppers in to blacken the skin. You want to keep an eye on them and turn them a few times so they get blackened equally on all sides.



While the peppers were roasting, I gathered the rest of my ingredients for my mise en place. Aside from the peppers, I needed some cubed bread, a nice amount of tomatoes (cut to about the same size as your cubes of bread), capers, sliced red onion, celery, and some basil. I also got some red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic and salt and pepper out for the dressing. The recipe also calls for anchovies, but I couldn't find them at the grocery store this time around, so I just put some anchovy paste into the dressing to mimic the flavor...I didn't really want to eat anchovy fillets anyway.



Once you've cut up the tomatoes, place them in a colander, resting over another bowl. Pour a nice amount of sea salt over the tomatoes and toss. Don't be stingy. The salt is going to draw the liquid out of the tomatoes and it will start to drip through into the bowl underneath pretty quickly. Let the tomatoes sit for about 20 minutes so you can be sure to get the most amount of juice out of it. These juices will be used for the dressing later! You'll see! :)



Meanwhile, cube your bread, slice your celery, thinly slice your red onions (giant pieces of raw red onion is not something anybody wants to pop in their mouth), and tear up those basil leaves. Toss this all together.



The peppers are probably done now...so here's what you do next. Take those peppers out of the oven and place them in a heat-resistant bowl and cover it with saran wrap. While the peppers steam, the skin pulls away from the meat of the pepper and you'll be able to just peel the skin right off!



Once you've peeled the peppers (please be careful, they are HOT, and they stay hot for awhile!) you can kind of just rip the meat in to ribbons. You can add the ribbons of roasted pepper to the mixture we've already got going on, and then turn your attention back to those salted tomatoes. In the bowl that's collecting the liquid, we're going to add the capers, some anchovy paste (since I opted not to use anchovy fillets), red wine vinegar, a couple healthy glugs of olive oil and a crushed clove of garlic. Taste the mixture before you season - anchovy paste and capers are both rather salty so you might not need more. I definitely added some pepper though.



Pour the tomatoes in to the salad, and then the dressing. Toss for a minute but don't overtoss because the bread is going to start getting soft. You should let the salad sit for about 10 minutes before serving so that the bread starts to soak up the dressing. However, if you are going to bring this to someone's house, keep the tomatoes and dressing separate until you get to your serving location. Otherwise, you'll have a soggy salad by the time people go to eat it.



Cool, refreshing and delicious!

And on another note : I have to make a plug for my yoga teacher/friend, Victoria! She's in a competition to be featured in an episode of Yoga Journal, and I promised her I would use every means possible to get her votes! Yoga means so much to her, and you can read her story on her page at Yoga Journal! Give her a rating to vote for her and help her win her dreams! Vote for Victoria here!

Radhika's Kebab Sausage with Tomato Jam

Tonight, I'm making sausages! Well, it's a loosely based version of a sausage, as there's nothing being stuffed into any sort of skin, but still...Quickfire Challenge here I come! (For all you Top Chef fans, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but for everyone else - it's from the Quickfire Cookbook, which includes recipes created during challenges on the show, Top Chef.)

This specific challenge was to create a signature hot dog. Radhika, from Season 5, made these great Kebab Sausages, and here we are, making them ourselves! You can find the recipe here. This recipe also calls for a bunch of accoutrements for the sausages. I'm sure these sausages would be wonderful on a roll, like the recipe describes, but I decided to serve them over a delicious, parsnip puree instead! A little heartier, and more ... dinner-like! :)

The first thing I did was make the sausage mixture. For this, I mixed 1 pound of ground lamb, 1/2 a pound of ground pork, and 1/2 a pound of ground beef with a tablespoon of minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of Tandoori Masala, kosher salt and ground black pepper. Once the mixture was blended, I put half of it into a food processor until it was finely ground. Then I mixed the finely ground portion back into the rest of bowl, and mixed some more. I then formed the mixture into the shape of logs, sort of like bratwurst.

Once that was done, I turned the oven to 350 degrees to preheat while I made the sides. I chopped a red onion into slices, and put them in a pan with a little canola oil to cook down for about 20 minutes. These browned onions sweeten as they cook and make a lovely topping for the sausages. In another bowl, I put a cucumber (peeled, seeded and diced), cilantro, white wine vinegar, capers and a little salt and pepper to taste. I set this aside to macerate for 20 minutes. In a third bowl, I made a tomato jam, which consists of mayonnaise, tomato paste, cumin and a little bit of heavy cream. I only used enough cream to thin the concoction, rather than the amount that the recipe depicts.

I browned the sausages on all sides in a skillet and then added them to a baking sheet I had waiting in the preheated oven, and then cooked them for another 10 minutes.

Once they were done, I plated the parsnip puree and piled two of the kebab sausages on each plate. I served the sides separately, allowing us each to choose our toppings appropriately. Once I added my toppings, I took a picture so you could see the finished product!

Voila! And this just goes to show, you don't even need a special tool to make your own sausages. They tasted a bit meat-loafy when cooked, and the sides were the perfect accompaniment to the flavors in the sausage. I really liked my pairing of the parsnip puree. I think it added something that a sandwich roll couldn't have contributed to the dish!