With the passing of the May long weekend, two things happen: gardeners decide it’s safe to start planting, and any use of your stove or oven in the summer heat seems unbearable (cue the resident eater’s look of incredulity when he came home last week in the middle of record-shattering May heat to find me baking a poppyseed cake in our already-sweltering apartment: “What are you doing in here? Are you BAKING?”). This means the beginning of lighter fare and no-cook meals, which mostly means one thing: salads.
I will admit that I generally scoff at the notion of salad as an actual meal. But if you combine fresh, sweet summer tomatoes with crispy grilled cubes of garlic bread, red onions, and bright green herbs, well — that’s a salad I can get behind. Especially if you grow the herbs and tomatoes yourself.
We generally try to grow our own herbs in the summer, which is achievable even indoors with a windowsill that gets enough light, so you have pretty much no excuse. There’s something incredibly satisfying about picking fresh herbs from your balcony and tossing them in whatever you’re making, and you save yourself the trouble of having to use up the remainder of the unreasonably large store-bought bunch in the next couple of days (which you wind up tossing most of anyway).
Last summer we decided to try our hand at tomato plants on our deck — absolutely worth it if you have six to eight hours of sun and a bit of backyard or deck space. The only issue was that it all happened at once; we went from having no tomatoes to having way too many tomatoes, which found their way to friends and neighbours because we were too lazy to stew and jar the overflow. If we were to do it again, I’d stick with the cherry tomatoes — we could pick a few of the ripest ones and toss them in a salad or just snack on them while making dinner, freshly picked and still warm from the sun (here are a few tips on what kinds of tomatoes grow well in containers).
This panzanella salad made growing those tomatoes all the more worth it. It makes great use of a large batch of tomatoes and serves as a delicious weeknight meal. The recipe is extremely versatile and you can throw in whatever fresh herbs and vegetables you have kicking around, and it’s a good way to use up stale bread. Make sure you toss everything together just before serving, to preserve the toasty crispness of the bread in contrast to the sweet and juicy tomatoes. You can use halved cherry tomatoes or slice larger ones to a size of your liking. I do recommend taking the time to seed the tomatoes if you can. If you don’t have a barbeque you can make the croutons in the oven. The amounts are approximate — there’s no need to be precise with this salad in quantities, just with the balance of the dressing.
Grilled Garlic Bread Panzanella
1 french loaf or baguette, cut crosswise into 1.5-inch slices
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, smashed
4-5 medium tomatoes/ 4 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered or halved and seeded
1/4 cup red onion, sliced thin
1 English cucumber, halved lengthwise then chopped in 1/4 inch slices (optional)
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil and/or parsley
Balsamic vinegar
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
1. Preheat grill on medium heat or set oven to broil.
2. Heat about 4-5 tbsp olive oil in a small saucepan on low and add smashed garlic. Cook garlic gently, allowing it to sizzle and brown slightly for a few minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 1 tsp of kosher salt.
3. Brush both sides of each slice of bread with garlic oil, then grill on direct medium heat until toasted, golden brown on each side. If baking, place bread on a baking sheet and broil in oven until toasted, flipping over once and watching carefully.
4. As bread is cooling, seed the tomatoes, then combine with cucumbers and red onions. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (start with about a tablespoon or two of each, depending on the amount of tomatoes you have). Adjust to taste, adding salt and pepper.
5. Cut bread into 1.5-inch cubes. Toss bread with vegetables and herbs and serve immediately.
Sara Chan is an articling student at a Toronto law firm. Her favourite food group is pork. Sara’s column appears every other Tuesday here on lawandstyle.ca.