Panzanella Salad, A Cottage Cooking Club Recipe

Today's post is the third installment of the Cottage Cooking Club, a virtual cooking group started by Andrea of The Kitchen Lioness. As a group we are cooking our way through the "River Cottage Veg", cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. The key idea is to incorporate more vegetables in our daily meals. Every month Andrea will select 10 recipes and we can pick and choose which one or ones we want to blog about in a single post.

This month I choose a classic Panzanella, which is essentially a bread and tomato salad. The whole idea is to use simple fresh ingredients. The outcome will depend greatly on the quality of the ingredients you put into it. The tomatoes should be at their peak, sweet and ripe. A few glugs of a good olive oil and slightly stale cubed bread are the backbone of this recipe.

The bread will soak up the tomato and olive oil dressing and pick up the flavors from the Kalamata olives, capers and feta cheese. It is suggested that you allow the ingredients to rest together a bit for more flavor. Garnish with fresh basil and serve.

This recipe was easy to follow and certainly showcased the ripe summer tomatoes I used in the dish.

Recipe adapted from "River Cottage Veg", by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, cookbook chapter Hearty Salads, Panzanella, page 86.

To see what recipes the other members chose for this month, head over to the LYL post for July on the CCC website, by clicking here.