La Panzanella-Bread and Tomato Salad

It has been over a month since we designed and ordered our kitchen.  A very long and frustrating month it has been.   I have hosted a lovely lunch outside under the Gazebo, had my first swim at Lago di Nemi, and enjoyed amazing strawberries at the Sagra delle Fragole.  At the same time, I have no place to put any of my kitchenware.  We have lived here since the end of April, but I do not yet feel unpacked or settled in.  There is a lot to do.  Most of what I want to do with this house and property are landscaping and gardening projects.  I am looking forward to the enormous potential of this place, the land, and I am forging a friendship with my neighbor down the road.  She is incredibly generous and kind.  I am blessed in this regard.  The apricots and figs are finally ripe which means summer has officially begun in these parts.  How great would this time be if I could make amazing meals for the people I love?   The terrace and the gazebo were the real selling points for the house, besides the enormous size of the kitchen.  I am so anxious to get started, to put my kitchenware away, and get cooking!
     Luckily, I live in the bread basket that is the Castelli Romani.  I have bread from Genzano or Lariano available to me, there are local veggie and fruit stands so I am buying the freshest produce.  Summertime, in this case, means we don't need a lot of prep to make a nourishing and delicious meal.
   I am always amazed by the plates of the region that have their roots in total poverty.  They were born out of the concept of making due with what we have.  Sometimes, these families might have only some stale bread and a few vegetables at hand.  Nowadays, people pay top dollar for these dishes in the priciest trattoria of Rome and beyond.  Panzanella is a great example of this food culture.  Ettore and I debate whether this is a true Laziale dish or if it comes from Campagna. For me it is from Lazio.  Irregardless, is there anything more heavenly than the sweet combination of ripe summer tomatoes and basil?  Panzanella is so simple, so filling, and utterly delicious.  I have made it a few times because all that I need are the following:  A cutting board, a bread knife, ingredients and a bowl.  There is no cooking involved, and it can makes a lovely lunchtime meal.  It is light, fragrant, and cool.
    Thank goodness for dishes like this!  Without them I would be still living on pizza and take-out.

Panzanella-Bread and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

• 1/2 loaf of crusty, stale, rustic Italian bread, sliced into 2 cm pieces and then cut up messy into bite size pieces(about 10 slices from the loaf)
• 1/2 kilo ripe cherry tomatoes sliced into quarters
• 10-12 sprigs of basil broken into small pieces
• 6 TBSP of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  I like the fragrant oil from Alatri
• about a 1/2 TBSP of coarse Celtic sea salt
• about three turns of the pepper grinder for pepper

Directions:

• In a Large Salad bowl, put the sliced tomatoes and basil and stir everything together
• Add the olive oil, salt and pepper
• Let this mixture stand without bread for at least an hour.  Room temperature is best, but also in the fridge would be fine.  This will ensure a much more fragrant salad as the tomatoes and basil will have time to marinate in their own juices for a time.  I also add about a TBSP of water.
• After and hour, add the bite size bread pieces, stir everything and let it sit for a few minutes so the breadt absorbs the flavors and juices.  If you need to add a bit of water and more olive oil and stir again.  The bread should be moist, but retain its bounce.

We enjoyed this with a lovely chilled Frascati, although I think it would have been nice with a Rosato

Buon Appetito!!

Being Neighborly

    I have not been able to post much in recent weeks because of a big change in my life.  I moved to a new house!  With all the packing, organizing, unpacking, painting, lack of kitchen, and new additions to the family, I haven't had much time to breathe, let alone blog about food or wine.  We moved from town to the countryside and it is like night and day in terms of the new lifestyle.  What I lack in convenience (shops, gas station, or a bar), I get so much more from my everyday life than I ever thought possible.
    Instead of the buzzing incessant sound of traffic, ambulances and garbage pick up I have birds.  In fact my next door neighbors have chickens, geese and ducks that are all very busy living out the dramas of their lives.  Instead an alarm clock, I have roosters.  During my afternoon naps I don't wake from the annoying sound of sirens, I wake up to the startling sound of new life.  A mamma bird has nested in the rafters of the roofs right above our bedrooms.  I am thoroughly enjoying the squeaks and peeps of the little ones.  She seems to be very attentive.   My cats are very confused about the situation.  They can hear the birds but they can't see them, so they have spent many wasted hours attacking the walls.  Bless their silly hearts!
     We also have the fortune of amazing neighbors.  The next door neighbors are very friendly with us.  They are restoring their house alone, so it is a long term work in progress.  In just a week we have learned about all the edible plants that are growing wild in our land.  Greens like Chicory, Borage, and Radishes.  We also discovered that this area is overrunning with wild asparagus.  One of the first meals I made was from the bounty of the "hunt."  We spent about an hour gathering edibles around the house and I cooked them up.  I made an amazing penne with wild asparagus, I sauteed it with olive oil, garlic, Celtic salt and some lemon juice.  It was superb. 
     The day after we officially moved in, our neighbors presented us with a welcome-to-the-neighborhood basket.  It contained the harvest of their land and included things like jams, olive oil, and wild asparagus.  One of the jams was cherry which I happened to eat in about a day it was so delicious.  What made it delicious is that it was not overly sweet.  It tasted like cherries not like cherry candy.They have a delightful family.  We noticed that when the kids come home from school in the afternoon they don't just go inside and turn their TV on or play with video games.  They are outside with the parents or hanging out with the geese and chickens.  They are very polite as well...unlike our neighbors before.  We lived in a building of eight apartments.  The neighbors upstairs were constantly fighting and yelling at their kids.  They were also teaching them at a young age to be the next generation of animal abusers.  Every time we would meet in the building they had to make some lame comment about my dogs being disgusting and dirty.  My dogs are far from being dirty.  They smell like fresh rain because they don't eat nasty dog food.  The neighbors below never cracked a smile or said hello.  The man was OCD and had to bleach the elevator anytime we had used it.  So besides being a jerk he wants to cause everyone's cancer from the fumes of chemicals.  But I digress...I no longer have to live in that Eco-monster HURRAY!!  In stead of having 6 animals in a cramped apartment my furry friends run around all day among olive trees, fruit trees and lots of overgrown grass.
    The other great neighbors we have are two houses down from us.   The woman is an American woman from Boston who is a vegetarian and a hippie.  They have over an acre of property.  She lives with her boyfriend who is a gardener.  His gardening philosophy is called Synergistic gardening which is based on the idea that there are no straight lines in nature and therefore there should not be in gardens.  The gardens are typically horseshoe shaped or round and raised above ground.  They are organic as well, and use veganic compost.  They have already invited us to dinner, which is very kind of them.  As soon as I have a kitchen I will return the favor and cook them an amazing vegan meal.  I think I will try to get into their hearts and minds through food.
    I can't emphasize how lovely it is to have neighbors that say hello, that I have something in common with, that don't have televisions, that care about animals and the earth, and that thrive off of producing their own food. 
    When we started this house hunting journey two years ago, I knew that when the right house came to us we would "know."  We must have looked at 15 different different houses all of which had characteristics we liked but most had characteristics that would would not want to deal with down the road.  Kitchens that were the size of an ant hill, a house that was beautiful but next door to an egg factory farm.  I was afraid of cancer from the pollution or becoming a hoarder of liberated hens.Now, two years later, we are in the "right" house and I think we are in a very blissful state.
     When we first started house hunting our main interest was in finding a garden large enough for our puppies and cats.  I promised myself and the powers that be that when we found this house I would go straight to a kennel and adopt an old dog that has been in the shelter for at least 10 years.  I found her!  Her name is Bumba and she is a survivor of hell and for me, she is a living miracle.  She was thrown away in the Canile of Rieti which was formally a Canile Lager, which I have written about in a former post here:
                                             Thousands Linger in Hell

Bumba was thrown in the canile in 1998 and was never taken out again, not even for a walk, until we picked her up on Saturday.  She lived 12 years in a concrete cell day in day out with no break.  She lived in her own waste and survived the period of time when the canile was really nothing more than a death camp for dogs.  She is my living miracle and teacher.  Who else but a dog can live like that and enter into the world without a stain on her personality?  She is so sweet and kind.  She is also very happy and affectionate despite never being socialized.  She plays with her new brothers and is curious about the cats.  The first night she was here she didn't stop walking around the land for about 12 hours.  I think she was overwhelmed.  Today I took her to the vet for a check up, but he couldn't analyze her blood because her ears are severely infected and full of pus.  Who knows how long she has lived like this.
   Our family is complete with her in it.  My new life begins now, a life of sustainable food, gardening, and being neighborly.  I also want to share the bounty of the land come harvest time. I am so grateful to the universe for allowing me the life that suits my family and I.