Polenta panzanella

y love of panzanella and it's many variations has been documented a few times on the blog... here, here and here, at least. Any kind of chopped salad with fresh seasonal ingredients gets me pretty excited...

When I had a few girlfriends over for lunch recently, I concocted a variation I hadn't seen around before, but it seemed like it should exist: panzanella with polenta cubes standing in for the stale bread. I did a google search (my first line of research, naturally) and found it listed on a few restaurant menus, but no recipes themselves appeared in a cursory search. But, I figured it couldn't be too hard to figure out... I had the polenta left over from a weekend breakfast and was bound and determined to find a use for it!

Polenta panzanella
Serves 4 as a side dish
2 cups cooked and cooled polenta that's been spread to about a 1/2 inch thickness, then cubed
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1.5 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup kalamata olives, pitted
1 can (16 oz) artichoke hearts in water, drained
1 red bell pepper, cored and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup cucumber, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped roughly
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Toss the polenta in bread crumbs and parmesan to coat, and then fry lightly and quickly in a hot saute pan so they brown and crisp up.

Drain the polenta cubes on a platter lined with paper towels to soak up any excess grease, and set aside.

Combine the next six ingredients in a mixing bowl until well combined, and then drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar lightly over the mixture. Stir again. Let sit for a half hour at room temperature to allow flavors to mingle.

Arrange polenta cubes on a serving platter and top with the tomato mixture and parmesan-bread crumb crumbles, if you're lucky enough to have a few of those fall off the polenta.

Serve immediately.

The frying step was the most challenging for me, but the fried crumbles of bread crumbs and parmesan that were left behind in the saute pan were one of the highlights of the dish. Truly yummy. I sprinkled them over the dish as I tossed the other, non-polenta, ingredients. Another google search found others with similar issues/concerns... I think next time I will have the pan hotter, and maybe coat the polenta in an egg wash before tossing in the bread crumbs and parmesan...

In all, this was a lovely surprise of a dish. I can imagine having it as a warm dish in the winter as well, making a kind of ratatouille stew over the top of the polenta cubes...

Ready to eat like it's spring: Panzanella

pring has sprung, it really has. The grass is green--I think it's the greenest it's EVER been, and when I mow, the bags fill up in, like, a minute. Like, really. (Say it in your best Valley Girl voice, you know you want to.)

And in keeping with spring-ish-ness everywhere, I am finally getting out of the soups/stews/pasta doldrums and back into salads and freshness and Asparagus. Asparagus with a capital A! It's local, it's cheap and it's yummy. I could eat it three meals a day.

And in the salad realm, I could probably eat panzanella for two of those three meals. It's a salad that has a few core basics (um, bread?!) and the variations are endless. Here are a few iterations that appeal to me:

Ina Garten's Grilled Panzanella: A pretty traditional take on the original with basil, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Strawberry Panzanella: This would probably be either a dessert or breakfast option, but looks really yummy!

Salmon Panzanella: This would be popular around here, for sure. A twist on the original (peppers, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, capers) with cooked, cubed salmon.

Cous Cous a la Panzanella: Replace the bread with couscous, not a bad idea.

Spring Panzanella: Now you're talking my language... peas, asparagus and spinach. Sounds amazing.

Mushroom Panzanella: A nice twist, the mushrooms. Maybe once I get out morel hunting...

So with all those ideas overflowing in my brain, here's where I ended up recently... this salad has a lot to do with what's currently in the fridge!

Spring Panzanella
(Feeds 2, generously...)
2 cups tomatoes, cut into large chunks
2 cups day old (somewhat dry and hard) crusty bread (Italian or French loaf), cut into chunks the same size as the tomatoes
2 cups asparagus, roasted and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups greens, washed and dried
1 cup baby potatoes, roasted and cut into 1/2 inch cubes (I had mini-babies, so I left them whole)
1/2 red onion, chopped
1/3 cup kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/4 cup good olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup parmesan cheese shreds
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together in a large bowl and let sit for a half-hour, at least. (I usually have a hard time leaving it alone, and generally eat it immediately! What a rebel.)

One critical thing is to have the bread be old/dry, and not fresh. Fresh bread will suck up all of the olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and get mushy. If you don't have day-old bread, put your cut up cubes in a 300-degree oven for 5-10 minutes until the edges get dried out

Other things I like to add, if they're around (and no, for clarification, not all together):
*Cucumber (would have added it to the above salad if I'd had any in the house)
*Hard boiled eggs and raw mushrooms and blue cheese (kind of like a Cobb salad)
*Peppers: roasted or otherwise
*Artichoke hearts
*Pinenuts
*Hazelnuts
*Basil, arugula or spinach
*Fruit, such as nectarines or pears (a local restaurant had a summer version with melons and peaches and tomatoes and it was heavenly... they are no longer serving lunch. Guess I'll have to make that one myself...)

As I was looking through this blog to see if I'd posted on panzanella previously, I couldn't help but be drawn in by two previous blog posts that mention the salad: one on basil, and one on summer salads. It's official: I'm ready for summer.