Warm September Salad

A fresh September salad with charred peppers and fennel, warm chorizo sausages, piquillo peppers, mozarella, parsley and croutons.

September salad

I love a Panzanella salad! Juicy tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, flavour-soaked bread and fragrant basil, a winning combination and summery joy.

It's September though, time to start saying goodbye to tomatoes and common sunshine. I can't quit cold turkey though so I've come up with this alternative which swaps out basil with parsley and tomatoes with other tasty bits: peppers, fennel and chorizo. And it was a winner if I do say so myself.

This September salad has it all in my opinion. The charred peppers bring sweetness, the fennel an aniseed twist, the piquillo peppers add smokiness, the mozzarella some creaminess, the croutons give some satisfying crunch and then nit's all wrapped up together with the freshness of parsley, zing of lemon and sharpness of red wine vinegar: DREAMY!

---

Ingredients (serves 4):

4 chorizo style sausages

2 peppers

1 fennel

1 Tbsp EVOO

S&P

25g Parsley

1 Lemon, juice

1/2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 Mozarella

5 jarred piquillo peppers

Croutons

- 100g Bread

- 1 Tbsp EVOO

- 1 tsp Herbes de Provence

- 2 Garlic cloves, peeled

---

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degC

2. Tear up 100g of stale bread into bitesize pieces. Toss in the EVOO, herbes, salt and pepper then lay out on a baking sheet with 2 peeled cloves of garlic. Cook until golden brown, approximately X mins then leave to cool

3. In the meantime, prick the sausages all over with a fork then cook over a medium-high heat until charred all over, approx 10 mins. To test if sausages are cooked through, put a knife through them to the centre of the sausage then take out the knife and place it on the inside of your wrist, it should be too hot to stand it

4. Veg prep: remove the core of the peppers and chop roughly into large chunks, about 2 bites-worth. Then for the fennel, remove the tops and keep them aside for later. Then remove the stalks and core. If you can, store those in the freezer to use in stock, otherwise bin them. Fennel then gets the same rough chop treatment as the peppers

5. Coat the veg in a generous amount of EVOO, salt and pepper then cook them over a high heat until they get a bit of char but keep some bite, approx 15 mins. Alternatively, cook them in the oven at 200 degC for 30 mins

6. Roughly chop up the piauillo peppers, then the fennel tops and parley. Throw all of these into a large salad bowl

7. Add to the salad bowl the juice of 1 lemon and the red wine vinegar

8. Strain the mozzarella then tear it up directly over the salad bowl into bitesize pieces

9. Once the chorizo sausages are cooked, chop them into 1 inch rounds then add them to the rest of the salad with the croutons and the cooked vegetables

1.0. Season with salt and pepper, toss the salad and taste to adjust seasoning if needed

11. Voila, enjoy!

---

Detailed Video: