Farmhouse Kitchen Recipe: Kale Panzanella

Aube Giroux is a documentary filmmaker, organic gardener, and food blogger. She produces Kitchen Vignettes, an online farm-to-table cooking show and food blog on PBS which received a Saveur Magazine Best Food Blog Award and is a two-time James Beard Award nominee. She also directed the award-winning documentary film Modifiedwhich received 15 film festival awards. Aube lives outside of Cooperstown, NY where she maintains a large garden and a lively flock of clucky hens.

Kale Panzanella:

This is a great dish to make when you have some stale bread that needs to be used up and lots of kale and tomatoes in your garden. You simply rip up the bread, toast it in a bit of olive oil until crispy and whip up this hearty, crunchy, and very flavorful salad! Here’s my easy recipe which you can adjust based on what’s in your kitchen (ie: you can sub corn if you don’t have cucumber) :

Salad:

3 Tbsp olive oil

4 cups stale bread, torn into pieces

1/2 tsp salt

Large bunch of kale (I prefer lacinato kale), de-stemmed and torn into pieces

1 to 2 cups chopped tomatoes

1 or 2 cucumbers, halved and sliced

1/2 red onion, halved and sliced

Handful of large fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

Vinaigrette:

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

3 Tbsp white wine vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

Dash of ground black pepper

Place all the vinaigrette ingredients in a jar and shake vigorously.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil, then add the torn bread pieces and salt. Cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes or until bread is toasted and golden. Mix all the salad ingredients together and toss with the vinaigrette. Add the cooled toasted bread croutons and the fresh torn basil and toss some more. Taste and add more salt and pepper to suit your taste. Enjoy!