Sunday 27 January 2013

Pane e Pomodoro (Bread and Tomatoes)

Ok, here we go.First post on this blog which  I'm still trying to figure out so you'll probably see it changing colour or other features in the next few days..Me and technology never got along really well.
But I'm starting anyway, with the simplest, quickest and most comforting meal ever. 
Pane e Pomodoro. I could eat this every day all day for the rest of my life and never get bored of it. Maybe it's because every time i bite into it I can instantly see the house in Puglia where i spent many summers as a child, sitting under the grapevine looking over our vegetable garden filled with rows of bright red tomatoes and big bushes of rosemary that you could smell from a mile away..The heat, the crickets, the white plastic table where I used to play cards with my grandpa who taught me all the best tricks. He introduced me to pane e pomodoro, actually in Puglia we used to eat Friselle which is a kind of bagel made with durum wheat flour, cut in half and baked. Friselle are crunchy so grandpa used to put them briefly under the water so they'd soften up, then we'd get some cherry tomatoes, cut them in half and squeeze the juice on the Frisella,then drizzle some olive oil, a pinch of salt and voila'!!!
A delicious quick mid afternoon snack..Sometimes i would actually have it as lunch because when the heat got really intense I never  felt like a full on meal. So here it is, very simple and satisfying.

Hope you'll enjoy it as much as i do. 






RECIPE
2 Slices of bread (or more depending on how hungry you are!)
7-8 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
pinch of salt

Just squeeze the juices of the cherry tomatoes on the bread and if you want,leave the tomatoes on as well, i prefer just the juice but it's really a personal thing.

Drizzle your oil and finish with a sprinkling of salt.

PS: please don't use the sliced packaged bread that you use for toast in the morning as it'll get all soggy and messy, try and get a nice loaf to slice or even a nice wholegrain baguette. In Italy we have pane pugliese which is a typical kind of bread from puglia. I had some nice sliced bread from a bakery called Poilane here in London but i know that's not always available in supermarkets so just get a nice tasty loaf and start eating!