Salad

Panzanella is a rustic Italian bread salad, created to use leftover bread. The vibrant tomatoes add moisture to the stale bread for a great summer main course or side dish. In this version, the bread is grilled for extra flavor. If your tomatoes are not at the peak of flavor, grill them, cut side down, until marked to bring out their natural sugars. Cut them into chunks and toss in the dressing before adding to the salad.

Of all main-course salads, the Niçoise is my all-time favorite, with its fresh butter-lettuce foundation; its carefully cooked, beautifully green green beans; its colorful contrast of halved hard-boiled eggs, ripe red tomatoes, and black olives; all fortified by chunks of tunafish and freshly opened anchovies. It’s a perfect luncheon dish, to my mind, winter, summer, spring, and fall—an inspired combination that pleases everyone.

This is a bare-bones recipe for the simple all-purpose vinaigrette, which you will vary as you wish; you’ll find suggestions at the end of this recipe. Its beauty lies solely in the quality of your ingredients. Note that you will so often see proportions of 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil, but that can make a very acid, very vinegary vinaigrette. I use the proportions of a very dry martini, since you can always add more vinegar or lemon but you can’t take it out.