As I’d promised myself when I woke up this morning, it could only be panzanella – Anna Del Conte’s recipe – for supper. It’s a trumpet voluntary, a salad in D Major, the whole brass section of flavours, the very food to make you joyful! Tomato, garlic, onion, basil, capers, good olive oil and red wine vinegar. It’s summer in a bowl, a last shout of sunshine and the kind of dish that I always make for four even though there will only be two of us at the table. It’s the salad that can transform a bad day into a good one – I’m going too far now, but you get the picture. We had the possibility of some pasta in hand, a frozen roll of pesto that would only have taken ten minutes to prepare, but the sourdough component of the salad is filling enough and apart from a pear we were done and smiling.
After supper we sat together reading through cookbooks – we are very greedy after all. Who’d have thought exploring a new vegetarian cuisine could be so much fun?