This Hearty, Peak-Summer Panzanella Is So Much More Than a Meal to Me

It was a hot peak-summer weekend in the Hudson Valley. Outside, tourists drifted in and out of shops, iced coffees in hand, pausing to admire hand-thrown pottery and vintage postcards. Inside the kitchen, where I worked, the scene was clattering pans, shouted orders, and quart containers of ice water constantly being refilled for us to drink between tickets. In the middle of it all came the farm delivery: a crate of heirloom tomatoes, just-picked and carrying a distinct, almost heady, grassy aroma. They spilled out in every shape imaginable—some squat and ruffled, others perfectly smooth and plump, a few wildly misshapen, and even a pointy one or two. There were fiery orange tomatoes, yellow ones striped like zebras, a pale green one or two, deep purples verging on black, and soft light reds with yellow freckles scattered across their skin. A few were barely the size of a small plum; others were giant and lopsided, struggling to stay upright.

Matt Hutchins—the chef-owner of The Hop in Beacon, a beloved former restaurant in Beacon, New York, with a unique focus on charcuterie and seasonal cooking—had ordered them for a one-off special. Wanting to preserve their beauty, he put together a simple dish: seared lamb chops served with a warm tomato-bread salad reminiscent of a panzanella. He cooked either shallots or red onions—I can’t quite remember—along with a few other aromatics in the same pan he’d used for the chops. Then, he deglazed the pan with a splash of vinegar and added the tomatoes and torn pieces of country bread. He let everything cook until the tomatoes just started to soften and break down, and out the dish went to diners. It was rustic yet elegant and loudly punchy, and while he only ran it once, nearly nine years ago, it’s somehow stayed with me ever since.

Maybe part of why this dish lingered with me for so long is that it veered slightly from the kind of food Matty was known for. His style was something like if Montreal’s famous restaurant Joe Beef (known for its maximalist, indulgent take on French-Canadian cuisine), a French countryside town, and Cajun cooking all moved to the Hudson Valley to have a baby. Think giant pork chops, rich terrines, and bourbon-cured, maple-glazed bacon—cooked or plated with whatever the farms around us had to offer that week. He taught me almost everything I know about charcuterie, sausage-making, and, most importantly, cooking with the seasons.

Matty was a larger-than-life and deeply lovable figure—a hopeless romantic with a heart to match his passion for all things pork. And something about the vibrancy of that dish, the way the delicate tomatoes took center stage over the meat, felt like a glimpse into his softer, calmer side: one full of love, full of zest, and full of care for the people around him.

The reason I’m still in the US now is because Matty welcomed me into his kitchen almost 11 years ago. After moving to the US from Amman, Jordan, and graduating from culinary school in Upstate New York, I was looking for work. Shortly after hiring me as a chef de partie at The Hop, he offered to sponsor my work visa. That’s the kind of person he was. He worked hard, handling the chaos and relentless stress of the kitchen day in and day out, but at the core of it all was this plaid-shirt-wearing, lumberjack-looking, mushroom-foraging guy who just wanted to create something beautiful and feed people.

Matty tragically passed away late this June, and now that he’s gone, I find myself reaching for the very first All-Clad pot I ever owned—one he gave me from his own collection. I still remember the thrill of taking that cassoulet pot home—something that felt totally out of reach at the time on a cook’s salary. He also handed me two little marble pig figurines that day, one black and one gray. (I accidentally knocked the gray one off my kitchen island and broke it not long ago. Sorry, friend.) Once tomato season arrived, I immediately felt the urge to make a warm panzanella salad with lamb chops, a loving nod to Matt and that wonderful dish I cooked on the line many years ago.

Why Two Ribs Are Better Than One

For the lamb chops, I’ve always found it easier to cook a double-rib chop in a skillet than a single-rib one. By the time you get a good brown crust on a single chop, the interior is often overcooked. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unlike beef, lamb still tastes great even when cooked to well done. This is partly because lamb—like duck—is a smaller animal, and nearly the entire chop has a rim of fat running around it. A ribeye, on the other hand, might have pockets of marbling, but a lamb chop usually gives you a proper edge of fat. Letting that fat render and crisp brings more flavor and juiciness than obsessing over a rare interior. Daniel discusses this in more detail in his pan-roasted rack of lamb recipe.

But if you prefer a rosier chop, the double-rib is much more forgiving. Its size provides a buffer, allowing a proper crust to form by the time the interior reaches medium-rare.

For the best flavor and texture, I always prioritize a good crust over a precise internal temperature when cooking lamb chops, and I recommend you do the same. I use a cast iron skillet for its heat retention, which helps build that crust. When cooking double-rib chops, it’s also important to baste the bone side and outer edges with the rendered fat from the pan—the curved bone prevents full contact with the skillet, so basting ensures the chop cooks evenly all the way around.

The Case For Drying Fresh Bread for the Salad

Since it wouldn’t be panzanella without bread, it’s important to give the star ingredient the proper treatment. We at Serious Eats always recommend drying fresh or almost fresh bread pieces in the oven instead of using stale bread for panzanella. As Serious Eats culinary director emeritus Kenji explains in his recipe for panzanella salad, staling is a structural change: Water migrates out of the starch molecules and into the interstitial spaces within the bread, causing the starch molecules to re-crystallize and form a tough structure. For this dish, the bread is torn into bite-size pieces and toasted until fully dry, for a pleasantly crisp texture that never turns leathery.

Why I Salt and Drain the Tomatoes

I almost always salt my tomatoes and let them drain in a colander when using them for salads. This not only prevents the dreaded soupy puddle at the bottom of a salad, but it also concentrates their grassy, sweet, umami flavors.

When I first started developing this recipe, I quickly realized that Matty’s method—tossing the tomatoes and dried bread directly into the skillet after searing the lamb and removing it from the skillet—wasn’t going to work in a home kitchen. It worked great when we were cooking a portion at a time on the line, but since this recipe is meant to serve four, piling in all that bread and tomato not only caused everything to spill over the edges of the skillet whenever I tried to stir, but by the time it was evenly mixed, the bread was soggy and the tomatoes were limp and broken down.

So I opted to leave the tomatoes and bread out of the skillet entirely, and after testing, I landed on heating the dressing on its own, then tossing the tomatoes in the warm vinaigrette. But since there isn’t enough liquid in the dressing to fully warm that volume of tomatoes and bread, I turned to the tomato water left over after I drained the salted tomatoes. Instead of discarding it, I add it to the vinaigrette in the pan and let the mixture boil together briefly. This not only provides enough hot liquid to warm everything through—it also gives the vinaigrette an extra vegetal boost.

Building a Warm Vinaigrette Right in the Pan

The warm and bright vinaigrette keeps the core elements of a classic panzanella dressing—tomatoes, shallots or red onions, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and basil—with the addition of thyme and tomato water. I can’t overstate how many hours I spent picking thyme leaves in Matty’s kitchen, usually with Television or XTC playing in the background. It was his favorite herb, and somehow—despite all the time spent picking it—it has become mine too.

In a hot skillet, the red onions, garlic, thyme, and Dijon mustard cook just briefly, until deeply aromatic. Then in goes the vinegar and reserved tomato water, and the mixture is brought to a boil before being poured over the bread and tomatoes, allowing the bread to soak up the juices.

The Perfect Peak-Summer Meal

This is a summer meal that’s perfect to turn to when tired of cold salads, but it’s still too hot for anything bubbling on the stove. While I love it the way Matty made it with lamb, you can swap it out for your favorite steak if you prefer. 

I’d like to think Matty would be happy with my version of this salad. Just like I once looked for his blessing on my taste in music—if Matty said it was cool, it was cool—I wish I could get his stamp of approval on this recipe now. I’ll keep making it every summer, carrying with me the knowledge, inside jokes, and all the formative moments we shared.

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