Receta Cialledda (Bread and Tomato Salad)

One of thing I find fascinating about Italian cookery—cookery in generally, really—is how you can take a culinary idea and, with a few subtle changes in ingredients or technique, get very different results. The frugal idea of mixing stale bread with chopped up tomatoes to make a salad, for example, gave us the world-famous panzanella from Tuscany and the lesser known caponata napoletana from the Campania region. Today we present la cialledda, yet another bread and tomato salad, this time from the regions of Puglia and Basilicata in the extreme south of the For panzanella you soak and then shred Tuscan bread before mixing it with the tomatoes and other ingredients, including a bit of vinegar. For caponata napoletana a kind of hard…