Thursday 9 October 2008

Get the party started


It was interesting conversation over lunch at work a week ago. One of my colleague pointed out that she had difficulties organizing meal for her vegetarian friends. Therefore she decided not to invite them for that matter. A little effort I thought to myself and you will be bowed over.
I never ceased to amaze my guests whenever I served the Italian antipasto(or better known as starter). One of them, I highly recommended is bruschetta. It is so easy to prepare and I guaranteed that your meat eating guests and vegetarian friends alike will be bowed over.

I picked some cherry tomatoes, fresh parsley and basil from my garden, bought a French loaf, extra virgin olive oil from my kitchen cabinet and I'm ready to shine again.

Bruschetta

Ingredients

Good for 4 persons

  • 8 inches long French loaf
  • 300gm cherry tomatoes
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • a pinch of sea salt
  • a handful of fresh parsley, coarsely chopped
  • 4 basil leaves, coarsely chopped
  • 5 cloves toasted garlic , finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil for the bread
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil for the tomatoes
  1. Sliced the round bottom of the loaf at both end, discard them. Then sliced the loaf horizontally with each thickness of about 1.5cm. Coat one surface of the bread with olive oil and lay the non coated surface onto the baking tray.
  2. De-seed the tomatoes and cut into small cubes. Add the lemon juice, salt, garlic,parsley, basil, olive oil and mixed them.
  3. Turn on oven grill, to 200C, place the bread and toast for 5minutes until golden brown. Removed from oven.
  4. Then scoop the tomatoes onto the toasted bread.
  5. Served in a lovely plate and have them while it's still hot.
Simple isn't it? It's not difficult to get the party started at all, a glass of wine and bruschetta, perfect isn't it?

Note: For toasted garlic, just throw in garlic cloves still in their skin and let it grilled for 10mins. Removed form oven and peeled off the skin.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Lovely. Been wondering how to make them since my first taste recently before Raya. Had them in a new cafe The Pirates, Bkt Beruang, Melaka. RM8 for a plate of 6pcs -3 topped with tomatoes & 3 topped with mushrooms.
Err...Italian antipesto recipe?

Christine Toh said...

Hi Jen, welcome to my blog and glad that you're here. This is sort of a starter before the primo and secondi in the Italian menus. Give it a try, you can actually experiment with different kind of herbs[oregano, pasrley etc] , and could also top up with grated parmesan for example. Traditionally, these loaf are toasted on charcoal fire....yummy.