panzanella

I love a caprese salad but I’ve eaten some pretty shocking ones in my time. Such a simple dish but surpringly easy to get wrong but you won’t, if you follow these three simple rules.
1. Don’t be stingy with the mozzarella. At least half of the caprese salad’s I’ve ever eaten, have consisted of a plate of sliced tomato and hang on… Where’s the mozzarella? Oh there it is, a few pissy slithers in between giant beef tomato slices. Not cool.
2. Seasoning, seasoning SEASONING! Nothing worse than being given a dry caprese in a restaurant that you have to season yourself with table salt. Horror.
3. Don’t try and serve it in a scooped out avocado skin. USE A PLATE YOU SAVAGE! That is what plates are for and besides, an avocado skin is too small and you can’t eat it so why is it there?! Exactly, get rid of it and double the portion. Oh and on another note, when did the avocado get involved anyway?

So forget avocado’s, why have I added bread to my recipe? Well, I went to my local Nisa this morning to buy some regular sliced brown bread but they didnt’ have any! I mean none at all, what kind of shop doesn’t have sliced brown bread?! I couldn’t buy white Kingsmill, could I? I mean I could, but I’d devour the whole loaf in one sitting, white bread is like crack, fact. So I was forced to buy a fresh crusty brown loaf that wasn’t pre-sliced #middleclassproblems. So halfway through slicing giant door stoppers I got cross and just started ripping bits off and angrily stuffing them into my mouth. I’ll just make my salad into a panzanella I thought, that will get rid of the bits I can’t fit in the toaster. So that’s what I did. Enjoy!

Caprese Panzanella
Serves 2 / Hands on time 10 mins / Total time 10 mins / V
450g mixed tomatoes
100g stale bread/sourdough
2 balls vegetarian mozzarella
Handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
Extra virgin olive oil

Method
1. Roughly chop the tomatoes, season well with salt and pepper and put in a large bowl.
2. Pull the basil leaves off the stalks, roughly chop and add to the tomatoes – discard the stalks. Roughly chop the bread into chunks and add to the bowl.
3. Give it all a good mix before draining the mozzarella and tearing into big bits. Season well with more salt and pepper, drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil and give it a final mix. Serve drizzled with yet more extra virgin olive oil and a good crack of black pepper.

If you’ve had a go at making any of my recipes, I’d love to hear from you. Follow me now @corrieheale and tag your recipe pictures using #corriesrabbitfood.