With or without cucumbers, with basil, mint or chives, with crumbled or whole bread. The summer dish par excellence of Central Italy actually has many versions. That can be enriched with imagination
The original version, alongside the stale bread (without salt), provides for the use of the ripe tomato, of the onion and (but not for all …) of cucumber. But behind the panzanella, once poor dish par excellence ofcentral Italy and today among the freshest, best and healthiest foods of the'summer, there is a whole world full of variations. Coming from regional cuisine, of course, but also with the contribution of the imagination: in the panzanella, after all, we can put everything. Just knowing how to find the right combinations.
Fabrizi's poetry
On the other hand, the great also said it Aldo Fabrizi, who even dedicated a poem to the panzanella: "And what do I have / p 'makes the panzanella? / Nun is that seasoning is a secret / Or it is established by a decree "). To claim with greater vigor the authorship of this dish, however, are the Tuscans, comforted by a writing of Bronzino, painter active in Florence in the 16th century according to which this dish, not yet called "panzanella" and without tomatoes, "wins every other pleasure of this life".
Tuscany or Roman?
We reiterate the ingredients of the traditional recipe: salt-free bread, ripe tomatoes, onion (preferably red, or a spring onion), salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and cucumbers. Already here, however, the first controversies arise. In Umbria and Siena, for example, often there is no cucumber; around the kingdom of panzanella (Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria and Marche) we can then find versions in which ripe tomatoes are replaced by Cherry tomatoes. In Rome, then, the bread is salty and it is not that "lackluster" or "foolish". In Umbria and Tuscany, then, stale bread is chopped after soaking it in a solution of water and vinegar; in Rome, on the other hand, it is more common to wet the crust of bread without breaking it. The debate also concerns spices and aromatic herbs: the prevailing solution is that of basil, but between Florence, Perugia and Rome we can also find oregano, parsley, chives and mint. Be careful if you find yourself in Lucca and in Lunigiana, areas historically independent from Florence and also linked to Ligurian and Emilian gastronomy: there the panzanella is a bread dough fried in hot oil, which has nothing to do with our stale bread with red tomatoes.
The Sicilian version
Curiously, the panzanella has also conquered an enclave in Sicily, between Enna and Piazza Armerina. Indeed, the Sicilians also claim their authorship thanks to the work of a trader of legumes of Prato origin, the Duke Alfio Panzanella. The Sicilian variant provides for the use of garlic, anchovies and capers. While, in the rest of the South, the panzanella is replaced by its close relative, the Neapolitan, Apulian and Calabrian frisella.
How to reinvent it
If we add to the tradition fantasy, panzanella can become a real hurricane of flavors: capers, olives, corn, tuna, raw peppers, boiled eggs. But there is also room for celery, the carrots and the raw zucchini. The panzanella with the buffalo mozzarella. The panzanella, after all, was born precisely to reuse stale bread, mixing it with what you had at home. Beyond the "sacred" traditional recipe, therefore, a little imagination does not hurt: it is the same spirit of this extraordinary dish that suggests it to us.
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