The picture for this recipe is even more stale than the bread you’ll need to use for it (though we’ll get to the stale bread part in a second). I actually made this out of the crusty rolls I had remaining after I made curried tomatoes but I completely put off posting the actual recipe.

The good thing about bread is that you can always find a way to use its leftovers. Day old baguette? Make some bruschetta's! Not sure of what to do with the bread from the grocery store? Turn it into breadcrumbs for meatballs or make some bread pudding and the list goes on. Now Panzanella is an Italian salad that will be of some good use in situations like these! As the salad sits over time, the bread soaks up more and more of that delicious vinaigrette its dressed with and changes texture so you have crunchy onions, lettuce, tomatoes with crunchy bread which slowly morphs into crunchy and moist. Exactly the reason why Panzanella is one of those novelties that you eat when you have lots of time to spare, because you actually get to notice these changes.

Stale bread or just dried-out bread?

A lot of recipes will actually call for stale bread because its most likely you’re making this salad in the first place to get rid of leftover bread. In theory, the recipe requisite is stale bread so that its dryness can be used to soak up the dressing. But then would you actually need stale bread? Chances are that stale bread gets fungus really quickly depending on the humidity and temperature of where you live so there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually end up using all the bread.

So instead of “waiting” to have stale bread or risking it going bad, you can just broil some fresh bread in your oven or microwave. Ultimately, you just want bread that doesn’t have any moisture so broiling it does get the job done!

The veggies.

I don’t like to limit myself to the vegetables I’m going to put in here. You could honestly use anything that could be eaten raw: lettuce, red onions, cucumbers, olives, capers, tomatoes or literally anything else you’ll find in your fridge; the sky is the limit!

Classic Italian.

Bread:

Chop up whatever bread you’d like into bite sized cubes. Spread the cubes onto a sheet pan and broil in the oven at about 180C until toasted.

Vegetables (I used):

• Onions (thinly sliced)
• Tomatoes (diced into triangles and salted, to extract the moisture for even better taste)
• Cucumbers (peeled and diced)

Dressing:

• 5-6 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp. mustard
• Superfine sugar (if required)
• Salt
• Pepper

In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper (and sugar, if required). Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking constantly. To ensure a smooth emulsion, make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. Pour the dressing over the prepared vegetables. Add the broiled bread and mix.

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Planning a barbeque or hosting a hot chicken wings night with your cousins? Temper the heat and clean your palette with this crispy Thai cucumber salad. 

Crunchy and juicy cucumbers and shallots in a tangy and sweet marinade of fish sauce and lime juice. Cilantro and mint scream for monochrome green but the addition of chilies compliment the salad with...red (and heat). Not to mention a generous topping of toasted peanuts!

Makes 4 servings:

• 3 tbsp. lime juice
• 2 tbsp. fish sauce
• 2 tbsp. water
• 2 tsp. sugar
• 2 large English cucumbers
• 1 large shallot
• 2 red chilies
• 1/4 cup peanuts
• Mint
• Cilantro

Whisk together the lime juice, fish sauce, water and sugar to make the marinade. Thinly slice the English cucumber, shallot and chilies. Toss into the marinade and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Toast some peanuts over a low flame until slightly brown. Remove from heat. Once cooled, remove the skin from the peanuts by rubbing them between your palms. Roughly chop the peanuts and mix into the salad. Garnish with cilantro and mint!

 I made this salad for one reason only: I got new crockery and wanted to plate with a lot of negative space. Really specific, right? Since I was doing this mostly for plating, I focused more on the composition and the little elements here. Anyways, this is a really simple cucumber dill salad with many fun components to live up to the plating's standard. I always had the feeling that cucumber and ginger paired great together, so I thought of soaking some in ginger ale just to see how they would turn out! Dill and cucumber are already universal, so why not? Finally some fresh rolled cucumber, toasted sunflower seeds for the nuttiness and yoghurt.

Salad:

• 3 large cucumbers
• Dill
• 2 cups ginger ale
• Sunflower seeds
• Yoghurt
• Fleur de sel, to taste
• Oil

Peel the cucumbers and slice them in half, lengthways. Scoop out the seeds and chop some of them to form C-shaped rings. Soak them in ginger ale for about 30 minutes. Toast about 1/4 cup sunflower seeds.

Heat a little oil in a pan. Once heated, turn off the stove and drop sprigs of dill and remove once crispy.

With the remaining cucumber, peel to form long and thin ribbons. Sprinkle with a little fleur de sel and set aside.

To plate:

Start by placing a crescent of fried dill on one side of the plate. Place the soaked cucumber on the dill, with the seed-scooped side upwards. Roll the cucumber ribbons and place some on the soaked cucumber and some on the dill. Garnish with the toasted seeds, yoghurt and fresh dill.

(I actually forgot to plate the sunflower seeds, oops!)

 Who doesn’t love a good ol’ sandwich? Especially when it combines with another ingredient: chicken, which is a favourite? Today, I wanted to do Coronation chicken sandwiches. If you haven’t heard of the name, don’t be so surprised. We’re not dealing with a super complicated, technical, out of this world (I hope they’re enough adjectives) sandwich. It’s basically a chicken salad in a sandwich, made in honour of the queen. But yes, it is a classic and it is eaten at British afternoon teas. It’s like a cross between Indian and British flavours. There are many variations that you might find, so I can’t say this is authentic, because I did simplify and modify a few things. The great thing is that it can be made with pretty much any left over chicken. These are super easy to make and great at afternoon snacks (did you guess?). You know, you can also eat the salad on it’s own! They may be a bit messy, but they're totally worth.

For the chicken:

• Boneless chicken
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil

   Toss the chicken with all the other ingredients and cook in a pan. Rest and allow to cool before shredding with a fork. (About 3- 3.5 cups of chicken is fine for this particular recipe)

Alternatively: If you already have a leftover roast or something similar, you may just shred that up and use it.

Other ingredients:

• 1/2 cup yoghurt
• 1/2 cup plain mayonnaise
• 2 small spring onions, finely chopped
• Raw mango slaw (Raw mango, salt, chili powder, lemon juice)
• Slivered almonds
• Pepper
• Cayenne/ chili powder
• Fresh coriander

o   Mix all the ingredients along with the shredded chicken. Garnish with some more coriander.

To assemble:

 So, continuing with the salad theme, here we have a really fresh prawn salad. It’s really one of those things that can be done start to finish under 25 minutes and tastes really good. And, if you’re a real health nut, it’s a double bonus! I was browsing through a lot of prawn salads and a few pictures that caught my eye were Greek style prawn salads. They looked really colourful and I figured they really wouldn’t need much time to do. As with all Greek salads, this one also features lettuce, olives and some of the other favourite Mediterranean ingredients. The problem really only arose for feta cheese, because I didn’t have any, so I guess this really isn’t an actual Greek salad, because no Greek salad is complete without the feta! So, realising that I anyways wouldn’t be able to make an authentic salad, I decided to go for something different for the dressing rather than the traditional vinaigrette. Prawns, mustard and honey already make a great combination, so, I just took those ingredients and made a yoghurt dressing featuring the two: honey and Dijon mustard. I actually did the entire recipe by eye, and I only realised this 15 minutes after the dish was done, so I wasn't able to give the exact measurements, but this dish is easy to estimate, being savoury. The only thing I wish I could have changed was the size of the prawns by getting bigger prawns. They're literally hidden in all the other vegetables! But overall, its a winner!

Welcome to The Fifth Symphony!

For my first post on this blog, I decided to create a really simple beet salad. I really love beets. They really are a fall type of root vegetable and I eat them like candy. There's actually a lot you can do with them and the entire vegetable is edible from the root to the stems to the leaves. So, when you're eating beets, don't toss the rest away! For this dish, I decided to use the whole beet (except the skin) to show how versatile it really is and also make good use of the stems and leaves which would otherwise be thrown away.

I started off by pairing the beets with a hint of ginger to emphasise on the fall flavour. We also have yoghurt, walnuts, pickled beet stems, simple beet greens and a beet sauce. I decided to pickle the stems with a little bit of honey, because I thought that they would be bitter, but I'm really happy with the final result. I also wanted the plating to be a little bit more whimsical, so instead of dicing up the whole beet, I just quartered it and arranged it at the centre of the plate.

• 1 medium sized beet (with the stems and leaves)
• 4-5 thin slices of ginger
• Pepper
• Salt

Pickled beet stems:

• Beet stems
• 1/4 cup water
• a little under 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp honey

Beet greens:

• Beet leaves
• Salt
• Pepper
• Lemon juice

Beet sauce:

• 1/2 or 3/4 of a large beetroot
• Lemon juice

To finish off:

• Yoghurt
• Chopped walnuts
• Fresh mint

Voila!!