My body was aching after taking care of Jared and Jaden all by myself for the last 9 days. I was their driver, cook, cleaner, tutor, etc and it was just the 3 of us for more than a week, which was a record for me. Tough job, no wonder my body was aching terribly.
I made a massage appointment for 11am. Before left home for the appointment, I prepared and cooked meat sauce for spaghetti Bolognese for dinner tonight. Looking at the ingredients, suddenly bruschetta came to my mind. The thing about Italian food is all in few ingredients i.e. olive oil, garlic, tomato, salt and pepper. I decided to make Bruschetta as appetizer for dinner tonight which has been ages since I last made it.
I felt so good after a good 1.5 hours of warm oil massage with hot stone. I was served with ginger tea. While sipping the hot ginger tea, I admired these lanterns hanging at the massage place. Such a sweet colour and pretty lanterns.
Sweet and pretty lanterns
There’s a nice Korean restaurant next to the massage place, owned by a Korean lady and have lots of Korean dine at the restaurant. I’ve been there several times and particularly like its kimchi pork stew.
My favourite Kimchi pork stew
On the way home, I stopped by neighborhood café to buy baguette. The staff asked me “Do you want to cut the baguette into slices?” “Oh … yes please”. And that made my work even easier.
Bruschetta is another easy to prepare food. It’s just a mixture of chopped tomatoes, balsamic, basil and garlic, spooned over olive-oil brushed slices of toasted baguette. It is a perfect finger food for a party or as appetizer of Italian dinner.
We can prepare in advance a large bowl of bruschetta topping, cut baguette into slices (or asked shop assistant to cut for you) and toast them ahead of time. I remember preparing this and brought to friends house to eat and watch football match together. And it was a hit, especially we paired it with beer.
In this recipe, I’ve replaced balsamic vinegar with Maggie Beer’s Verjuice which we bought from Maggie’s Farm Shop in Barossa Valley.
Simple ingredients for Bruschetta
Ingredients
- 8 plum ripe tomatoes (cut out stem base, remove seeds and diced).
- 8 fresh basil leaves, chopped or thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon Verjuice (or balsamic vinegar)
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 baguette French bread, sliced diagonally 1 cm thick and toasted
Method
- In a bowl, mix together tomatoes, basil, Parmesan cheese and garlic.
- Mix in Verjuice (or balsamic vinegar), olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.
- Brush one side of each slice of baguette with olive oil and place olive oil-side facing up on a baking sheet or roasting pan. Toast in toaster or on the top rack of oven at 230°C, for 5 minutes until bread lightly browned around the edges.
- Serve the toasted baguette slices plain with a bowl of the tomato bruschetta mixture on the side for guests to top their own, or use a spoon to gently top each toasted bread slice with some of the tomato mixture, right before serving.
If you do not like the sour taste of tomato, peel away the tomato skin.
- Put water in a pot to boil.
- Make shallow cuts in a cross pattern at the tip ends of tomatoes to peel tomatoes easily.
- Once water boiled, remove the pot from heat.
- Put tomatoes in the hot water and blanch for 1 minute.
- Remove tomato from pot and once cool, gently peel off the tomato skins.
I made these few for my photo taking. And my bruschetta didn’t make it to appetizer for spaghetti dinner as they were all consumed during tea time.
We can also add slices of smoked salmon on top of the bruschetta topping to make smoked salmon bruschetta.
