panzanella with punch

My lunch came together quickly this morning.  Leftover wheat berry salad with cucumber, tomatillo, and corn from a dinner party on the weekend (details to come).  One chopped tomato.  Thin slices of cauliflower stem for crunch.  Heaps of purple basil and oregano blooms.

Kathleen had brought in some ultra-garlicky toast with a good char on the edges (Add one more to the tally of reasons why Kathleen is a superstar).  She wasn’t needing it all, so I crushed it in the bag and into the salad it went.  Toss that with some olive oil and sea salt and we’re talking flavour so huge it really needed its own neighbourhood.

But seriously, there was so much flavour here I almost couldn’t handle it.  The garlic croutons especially pushed it over the edge.  The wheat berries really held up to the juiciness of the tomato, and the toasty charred breadcrumbs lent a grilled flavour that I love.  All those heady herbs, especially those oregano flowers, added a halo of aroma and sweet bitter oils that I could not get enough of.  And that crisp cauliflower stem!  Do not discard your cauliflower stems if you have any sense of self-interest.

Hannah, Christiane, Kathleen and I ate lunch all together in Brooklyn Bridge Park today, under a tree with wide-angle views of Manhattan.  It was pretty idyllic and fun.  Afterwards, we went to Jacques Torres for ice cream – my second time since last week.  But I’ll tell about that soon.

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02 Aug This entry was published on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 1:09 am. It’s filed under day-to-day eats, work and tagged brooklyn bridge park, char, corn, cucumber, garlic, oregano flowers, panzanella, purple basil, toast, tomatillo, tomato, wheat berries. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.