Italian bread salad, AKA panzanella, must have been invented as an ingenious and tasty way to use up day-old loaves.
A simple, herb-scented salad that’s especially welcome in the warmer months, it almost goes without saying that for best results, use the most flavorful tomatoes you can find. That’s part of the reason for the bread — to soak up the juices from the tomatoes.
Make it more substantial: Add chickpeas or white beans to make this salad heftier and to give it some protein.
Roasted red pepper dip is an easy vegan appetizer you can make in a flash, using just 5 ingredients.
The intense flavor of roasted red peppers gives this dip a smoky-savory flavor that you can push in one flavor direction or another depending on whether you use smoked or sweet paprika.
Serve with a platter of colorful raw vegetables, whole grain crackers, fresh bread, and/or bruschetta.
Sometimes, it’s the combination of ingredients rather than a lot of ingredients than makes a great salad. Case in point, this colorful avocado and radicchio salad.
Avocado, radicchio, tender greens (like watercress or others), and cherry tomatoes — that’s it! It’s a simple salad that makes a statement.
Radicchio is a small leafy vegetable that’s used like lettuce, though it belongs to the chicory family. It’s especially beloved in Italian cuisine. Slightly (yet pleasantly) bitter, contrasting it with avocado tempers ints slight bite.
Here’s a favorite vegan appetizer that never fails to please — a tasty white bean dip that you can embellish as suggested in the recipe, or keep smooth and simple.
Similar to white bean hummus, this bean dip is a great appetizer that goes well with bruschetta, fresh breads, pita, olives, and/or raw vegetables of your choice.
What sets this apart from hummus is that there’s no tahini, but there’s large onion that’s well sautéed and added to the mix before it’s smoothly processed — it adds a lot of flavor!
