I admit I am an addict, a tomato addict. I love the sweet and tart taste of fully ripened tomatoes.
Just bought my first batch of local tomatoes this summer! What a treat! I choose tomatoes by the intoxicating aroma at the stem, the fresher the tomato, the more intense the smell. I am intrigued by the variety of sizes, shapes and stunning colors. The balance of sweetness to tartness, firmness to softness, juiciness to dryness make eating a tomato in season a special experience for me.
My addiction started as a toddler in a Displaced Persons’ camp in Bad Kissingen, Germany. Along with hundreds of other immigrant families, the International Refugee Organization settled our family of four, my parents—Mama and Tato, my baby sister Maria and me, in a large hotel ballroom partitioned into small square quasi-rooms with walls of khaki green army blankets. While adults treated these walls of green blankets as boundaries of privacy after months of living in the open and on the run, these flimsy partitions were a source of amusement for a not-quite-three-year-old toddler who could walk under the blankets. When Mama cared for Baby Maria, I wandered off to explore the premises.
The Bad Kissingen refugee camp was our first stop in post-World War II partitioned Germany. As DPs we were not welcomed by the native German population, which viewed us as enemies, as contributors to their war defeat and as a further drain on meager food resources. But they needed the DPs to survive. While the DPs were penniless, we had more to eat than the neighboring German population. We received daily rations from the US Army and Red Cross packages containing poor quality canned meats marked “Food for Prison,” dried eggs, dried potatoes, coffee, chocolate bars and cigarettes, the latter three a common currency for bartering with the Germans for fresh milk, bread and vegetables, used children’s’ clothes and old shoes. But DPs were not able to supplement this meager diet by bartering alone. Occasionally, a pig, cow or sheep was stolen, butchered at night and shared. As one military observer noted, “Have you ever seen a DP’s rations on a plate? If so, you wouldn’t blame them for stealing a pig or two!” So a black market driven by the needs of the DPs and the local Germans thrived much to the dismay of the US Army.
Native Germans and the DPs were often suspicious of each other, ready to accuse the other of criminal or other nefarious behavior. At some point during our stay in Bad Kissingen, a rumor circulated among the DPs in our camp that Germans were kidnapping blond-haired DP children to replace those they lost in the war. So one day, Mama panicked. I had wandered into that forest of blankets and did not return from my hiding place when she called me. Initially, she thought I was so engrossed in some discovery, oblivious to her call. After several minutes of searching neighboring hiding places, Mama raised the alarm and soon every adult in the ballroom, fearing the worse, was looking for me. I was nowhere to be found.
But after several tense hours, my Tato, who just returned from his daily bartering excursion, thought to look in the mezzanine that encircled the ceiling of the ballroom and was only reachable by a tall staircase which most thought was not navigable by a toddler. There I was sitting happily covered in tomato juice and seeds. A camp dweller found or stole some unripened tomatoes in a German garden and placed them on a warm window ledge to ripen, thinking it a safe hiding spot. Mama later told me that up to that point in my life I had few fresh fruits and vegetables, and she believed that my toddler’s body wisdom was attracted to these juicy red orbs and their vitamins.
Since that pivotal event, I have eaten tomatoes whenever possible. When Tato and my grandmother Yuliana later had gardens in the US, I would zealously watch for ripening tomatoes and pick a warm one off the vine, voraciously eat it with juice running down my chin and arms. My taste buds exploded from the tomato sugars and acids of the Big Boy, Beefsteak and Early Girl varieties, and I was intoxicated by the volatile molecules given off by the tomato plants.
Although I eat tomatoes throughout the year in every form as paste, sauce, whole canned, diced, stewed, sun-dried, my preference is seasonal tomatoes and I look for recipes that capture, not overwhelm, fresh tomato flavor.
Recently, while seated in a Tel Aviv restaurant along the Mediterranean Sea deciding what to order for dinner, I watched plates heaped with tomatoes repeatedly come out of the kitchen. The natives liked this salad, I thought. So I ordered the Israeli version of “panzanella,” a classic Italian summer salad now served throughout the Mediterranean region.
I’ve had panzanella before, good and bad. Some versions hit the mark with juicy yet crisp tomatoes, firm not quite crunchy bread that slowly absorbs the tomato juices, a subtle taste of garlic, basil and onions. Many excellent panzanellas also contain cucumbers, peppers, basil, olives, capers, fennel, parmesan and even beans. Other versions contain mushy bread, almost like paste, or soggy tomatoes prepared and refrigerated before serving. Still others are overdressed in mustard viniagrette which masks the unique tomato flavor.
Legend has it that panzanella has ancient origins: in the 14th Century, Boccaccio in The Decameron mentioned a soaked bread (“pan lavato”) recipe. The word panzanella is said to come from the two words “pane” (or bread) and “zanella” (soup bowl) and others claim it means “panzana” meaning “pappa” (food). In Italy, traditionally, panzanella was made at home from day old bread and fresh garden vegetables.
There are probably as many recipes for panzanella as there are Italian cooks and regional differences. The only similarity between these varied recipes is tomatoes and stale bread. Both Guiliano Bugialli in his classic, The Fine Art of Italian Cooking, and Carlo Middione in his The Food of Southern Italy, decree that in making panzanella, only special stale bread (Tuscan in Bugialli’s recipe or Roman in Middione’s recipe) should be soaked in cold water until thoroughly moist, then squeezed until dry and torn into small shreds. However, Giorgio Locatelli in Made in Italy: Food & Stories says that soaking Tuscan bread in a few tablespoons of vinegar will produce a flavorful result. Still, other Italian cooks don’t bother soaking the bread, relying instead on the juices of ripe tomatoes to soften the bread quickly.
Once cooks in other countries discovered panzanella as a good recipe for using abundant tomatoes and stale bread, traditional Italian versions morphed into tasty new recipe combinations.
The Israeli panzanella I enjoyed was colorful and delicious because it contained assorted heirloom tomatoes with an excellent blend of sweetness and acidity. Every bite produced a different sweet-sour taste. This version of panzanella also contained cucumber, red onions, capers and olives. But most importantly, the bread, a mainstay of the salad, was not cut but torn into large chunks, oven toasted, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and flavored with crushed garlic. The salad was dressed simply: sea salt, pepper, a few tablespoons of red wine vinegar, more extra virgin olive oil and a chiffonade of basil leaves.
The Israeli chef obviously assembled the ingredients within a short time of serving. Room temperature tomatoes cut randomly, kept their shape and were just starting to release their juices. The onions and cucumbers were still crisp. The croutons still had bite, were softening slowly in the tomato juices.
Panzanella
4 cups day-old sourdough, with crust left on and torn into chunks about the same size as the tomatoes
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 cups assorted heirloom tomatoes of various colors, cut into random chunks
1 English cucumber, cut into quarters, seeded and sliced into ¾ inch chunks
1 cup red onion, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon capers
½ cup Kalamata or Niçoise olives, pitted and crushed
¼ to ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon each, sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 bunch fresh basil, cut into a chiffonade or torn into little pieces
Pre-heat oven to 300 °F (150 °C).
Spread the bread on a baking sheet. Drizzle with 5 tablespoons of olive oil and stir to coat. Toast the bread in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and dry to the touch, but not hard like croutons. Add crushed garlic to the warm bread. Stir and set aside.
To conserve tomato juices, put a cutting board on a rimmed baking sheet and cut the tomatoes into random chunks. Pour the tomatoes and accumulated juice into a mixing bowl. Set aside.
Combine cucumbers and onion in a bowl. Add olives and capers. Set aside.
Combine vinegar, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Whisk in olive oil until well-incorporated. Add toasted bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, capers and onions. Mix until combined. Adjust salt and pepper. Let marinate, covered, at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. (Do not refrigerate as chilling will alter the texture of the tomatoes.)
Arrange in a serving dish or divide onto salad plates. Garnish with basil.
Serve at room temperature.
Serves 6-8
Photo credits: Slava Johnson