The other day for dinner I had made some Corn Muffins to go with dinner. They were the perfect addition to the meal, but we had a few too many to eat with dinner. I had one for breakfast the next day with some jam, but really, I prefer corn muffins fresh, the day they are made. I grabbed the bag they were in and went to throw them out when the thought of panzanella came to me. How would that be? I detoured away from the garbage and went and grabbed my Fresh Every Day cookbook where I thought there was a panazanella made with cornbread. Sure enough, I found it, and while I didn’t quite have all the ingredients called for, I had some of them, and I thought I could use these muffins to cobble together my own sort of panzanella.
I began by cutting the muffins into cubes and then toasting them in the oven, tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper. Once done, I set them aside to cool completely, and then I went foraging for other ingredients.
I pulled a carton of campari tomatoes out of the pantry. They needed to be used, so those would be my tomatoes. Next, I grabbed a vidalia onion from the fridge and lobbed off a few slices of that. A quick trip to the garden found a few tiny basil leaves and some parsley. I dug through the fridge and found an avocado, which I opened, and then found I needed to cut off some brown parts, but otherwise, I thought it would work okay. Finally, I grabbed some olive oil, red wine vinegar, crushed red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper.
I didn’t measure anything, I really just tossed all the chunks into a bowl, and then in a smaller bowl I combined the vinegar, oil, and seasonings, and then poured that over the chunks, adding the herbs last. It was perfect. I added a squeeze of lime at the end, and I sat down to the perfect end-of-the-day, I’m really tired meal. We’d spent the afternoon at the fair, and so after indulging in a few treats, a virtuous salad was just the ticket. It also used a leftover I was going to toss, and enabled me to use a bunch of things that were just sitting around languishing. The cornbread was perfect for a panzanella, I’ll definitely be making it again when I have a bunch of ripe tomatoes lying around needing to be used.
Sounds delicious–I love cornbread in any form. You could try croutons next time also–which are really fabulous in a tropical gazpacho.
It never really occurred to me to use a muffin for anything other than a muffin. Now I know better! I love homemade croutons too, so that will be at the top of the list, as I always seem to have a few too many muffins lying around.
Left-over corn muffins in the freezer as we speak…croutons for me!