ciabatta – Bangers & Mash

Tuscan panzanella

June 14, 2013June 14, 2013Posted in Recipes, VegetarianTagged Chez Foti, ciabatta, delicieux, four seasons food, herbs on saturday, italian, italy, lavender & lovage, panzanella, salad, tuscan, tuscany13 Comments

Panzanella is a tasty and satisfying Italian summer salad, perfect for picnics and eating al fresco. We enjoyed it last weekend when the sun was shining and it felt like we were on holiday in our own garden. The weather has sadly turned greyer and damper, but I am hopeful the blue skies will return. Hope, hope!

I took this recipe from a cookery book called Yolanda’s Kitchen, written by Yolanda Pearson who was born in Normandy to a French mother and an Italian father. With that kind of a background, it’s not surprising Yolanda can cook. Yolanda is a good friend of my husband’s family. As a boy, Jason used to play with Yolanda’s son Simon whenever they visited their holiday cottage up in Shropshire and he has very good memories of eating well at their house.

According to Yolanda…

This traditional Tuscan snack gets its name from the ‘Zanella’, the ditches by the side of the fields where the farm labourers used to sit to eat their lunch, and ‘Pane’ (Italian for bread). Thus they mixed leftover and dried-up chunks of bread with whatever salad ingredients their vegetable patch had in season, hastily dressed with wine vinegar and olive oil and enjoyed in the open air as a one-course meal.

I find the salad is enough on its own for a good lunch. I’ve been taking it to work this week in my lunchbox, and it’s surprising how crispy the ciabatta stays even when it has soaked up some of that tasty dressing. I do have to apologise though when I open it up, as it rather reeks of garlic! It’s also good as part of a picnic or served as a side dish with a barbecue.

Tuscan Panzanella

Serves 4

1 ciabatta loaf
200 cucumber
3 spring onions
2 celery sticks
1 garlic clove, crushed
250g small plum tomatoes
2 Little Gem lettuces, leaves torn
handful of basil leaves
150ml extra virgin olive oil
50ml red wine vinegar
1 tsp white sugar
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 160°C / gas mark 2-3.

Cut the ciabatta into bitesize cubes, place them on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until it gains just a little colour. Leave to cool.

Peel, deseed and slice the cucumber. Finely slice the spring onion. Dice the celery. Mix together with the crushed garlic.

Cut the plum tomatoes in half. Yolanda says here to remove the seeds, but I must admit I didn’t bother with this bit.

In a large salad bowl, mix together the bread, tomatoes, lettuce leaves, chopped vegetables and torn leaves of basil.

In a small bowl, mix together the oil, vinegar, sugar and salt and pepper.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss well before serving.

As this is salad is perfect for picnics and outdoor dining, I’m entering into Four Seasons Food, a wonderful new challenge hosted by Chez Foti and Delicieux. The theme for the start of summer is Picnic Food & Outdoor Nibbles.

And as it contains lots of fresh basil, I’m also entering it into Lavender & Lovage‘s ever-popular Herbs on Saturday challenge.

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

April 22, 2013April 23, 2013Posted in Bread, Meat, RecipesTagged blog challenge, bread, children, ciabatta, cooking with children, pizza, recipe challenge, recipes for life, swallow charity8 Comments

Now that I’m working full-time again, the only chance I really have to play around in the kitchen is at the weekends. But then if I spend too much time in the kitchen, I feel bad that I’m not spending enough time with the kids. So wherever possible I try to involve Jessie and Mia in the cooking too.

On Saturday, after spending the afternoon in Bath shopping for new clothes (my girls are growing so blinking fast at the moment!), we rustled up some quick ciabatta bread pizzas for an easy tea. And the girls enjoyed deciding on their own toppings.

I’m not really sure whether to call these posh open grilled sandwiches or ciabatta pizzas – I guess they’re somewhere in between. And they don’t really warrant a recipe. I simply spread some passata on sliced ciabatta (you may prefer French bread or even a slice of cottage loaf) before the girls got going with their own special creations. Up for grabs was whatever we found in the fridge; leftover tinned sweetcorn, ham and salami, some chopped wild garlic leaves we’d picked from the hedgerows, black olives, capers and of course lots of mozzarella cheese.

Mia likes to play safe when it comes to food and kept her pizza topping simple. She isn’t a big fan of strong flavours like olive and capers. Despite that, she did go crazy with the wild garlic, and ate it all quite happily.

Jessie, on the other hand, has always been much more adventurous with food, and went for everything on offer. If there had been raw chillies, she’d probably have thrown some of those on there too.

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

Serves 4 (2 adults, 2 children with leftovers perfect eaten cold for breakfast!)

4 small part-baked ciabatta, sliced widthways
350g passata or crushed tinned tomatoes
3 x 125g mozzarella cheese

And any toppings you fancy – we went for…

cooked ham, roughly chopped
salami, roughly chopped
tinned sweetcorn
pitted black olives
capers
wild garlic leaves, roughly chopped (or any other fresh or dried herb)

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

Smother the ciabatta with passata and decorate with your chosen toppings. Tear the mozzarella and place on top.

Place your ciabatta pizzas on a lightly greased baking tray and pop in the oven (or alternatively under a medium grill) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the bread is lightly toasted and the cheese has melted. Easy as.

As our ciabatta pizzas feature ham, salami, sweetcorn and tomatoes, I’m entering them into this month’s Recipes for Life, a challenge hosted by me and run in conjunction with SWALLOW, an amazing charity supporting adults with learning disabilities. Each month we set three ingredients and challenge bloggers to use these to come up with tasty, healthy and easy to cook dishes that can be made by SWALLOW members in their cookery class and at home. And this month’s three ingredients just happen to be pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes…

If you like this, you might also like to try…

The perfect Father’s Day breakfast: fried egg with garlic portobello mushroom on ciabatta

June 16, 2012Posted in Recipes, VegetarianTagged breakfast, ciabatta, Fathers Day, fried egg, garlic, garlic butter, mushroom, portobello mushroomLeave a comment

Here’s an easy way to put a smile on Dad’s face this Father’s Day (Sunday 17 June in the UK). Toasted ciabatta topped with a portobello mushroom baked in garlic butter and a heart-shaped fried egg. The perfect way to start the day; after a lie-in and a cup of tea in bed, of course.

To make the garlic butter simply crush a clove of garlic and mash into a decent knob of butter. Add some chopped, fresh parsley if you happen to have some. Smother this onto a portobello mushroom and bake in a hot oven for 15 minutes.

Cut a ciabatta roll in half and toast.

Place a handful of salad leaves in a bowl and toss with a little vinaigrette.

Fry an egg just how Dad likes it – sunny side up or over easy. I cooked mine in a cute heart-shaped frying pan or you could fry your egg as normal and then cut it out with a heart-shaped pasty cutter.

To assemble, simply place the ciabatta on a plate and cover with some dressed leaves. Carefully place the mushroom on top of the leaves and spoon over some more of the gorgeous garlic butter.

Finally, place the fried egg on top and serve, along with a copy of the Sunday papers. Enjoy!