🍅 Personal Pan Panzanella 🍅

My ideal summer lunch for one

Welcome back to Mess Hall, where I am finally returning to mostly-regular programming after an exciting month of deep irregularity. Did you catch Fran’s piece on the food podcast Off Menu from last week??? It was so good—thank you Fran :)

Today, although we’re a day shy of July, I’m kicking off TOMATO MONTH: a month of (probably, mostly) tomato-focused newsletters. This is how my hungry brain occupies itself in July, and therefore how my newsletter will occupy itself as well. Enjoy :)

When tomato season rolls around all I can think about is tomatoes on bread. Garlic rubbed fried toast shingled with thin red slices, fat BLTs sure to make a mess, the requisite tomato-mayo sandwich. Perhaps this implies a lack of imagination, but I like to think it’s just a case of knowing what I like. Panzanella, too, is a crucial component to this summer cannon. 

waiting for a gob of burrata

Each summer I dream of being the person who shows up gaily at the farmers market every Saturday morning, and each summer that happens at best once a month. I don’t live close enough; I love an indulgent Saturday morning at home; and anyways, I have a CSA now, which does much of that work for me. Even so, I try to get to the market once a month, for tomatoes and basil and She Wolf bread, and then stone fruit once it appears. Perhaps the best part of the trip to the market is the coming home, the making lunch, the allowing myself to make a big mess before I put everything away. Toasting up the first slice of bread, slicing the first tomato. Making a meal only for myself, with my own private bounty. 

In the spirit of these just-for-me weekend lunches, I came up with what I’m calling Personal Pan Panzanella, a single-serving tomato-and-bread salad that requires no staling, no waiting, no marinating, no hot oven¹. And it tastes, just a little bit, like a pizza: mostly from a big pinch of oregano in the dressing, and a few slices of pickled peppers. A flavor profile that leans a little more Pizza Hut Birthday Party than Roman Trattoria, and proudly so.