#67: Bread Salad
No one remembers a salad for its greens. No one says “oh that salad was so good, the lettuce was such a great touch”. No. People remember salads for all the other components of the salad that distracted them from the fact that they were eating a plateful of greens. The cheese, the nuts, the dressing, the bacon, whatever – anything other than the foliage itself. Bread salad inherently understands this detail and as a result has done what other salads dare not do: make the entire salad from the delicious add-ins, and maybe even skip the greens if you’re bold enough. Oh, and go heavy on the croutons. In fact, make the whole salad croutons! Bread salad sees into your carb-craving soul and understands that this is what you are seeking in this kale-laden, green-juice smothered world. A salad made mostly of bread, with a dressing that smacks you in the face with flavour, and only enough vegetables to just qualify as being salad.
Perhaps you are torn because you, virtuous weirdo that you are, actually like the greens in salad. You sort of see it as the point of salad, in fact. Perhaps you would prefer a salad that is a more evenly divided mix of “bread” (in the form of toasted, olive-oil slicked pita) and produce (but with a good mix of cucumbers, tomatoes, and herbs, so as to not negate the point of bread salad entirely by making it all lettuce all the time). Say hello to your new favourite summer salad: BA’s Best Fattoush Salad. If you were never torn to begin with, and in fact have started to nod off now that the conversation has briefly returned to vegetables, fear not, for you are about to be bedazzled by a salad so bready it could only have been invented in Italy. My favourite panzanella salad steps up to bat, crowned with strips of deeply roasted peppers and fat wedges of tomato, everything bathed in a luxurious basil dressing that should probably start becoming part of your regular meal prep situation because it’s good on EVERYTHING. Oh and there’s cheese too, so, that helps tone down some of the health propaganda being toted by those tomatoes and peppers.
