Bruschetta 3 ways

Submitted by NosmoKing

Today we'll be making three different varieties of Bruschetta. It's a reasonably simple appetizer, but very yummy. Since it uses only a few simple ingredients, you'll get the best results if you take the time to get the highest quality, freshest ingredients you can find. I ran to my local farmer's market and got fresh off the vine produce.

We will be making a plate of Bruschetta with 3 different types of tomato toppings. You'll need three different bowls to hold and mix your tomato goop.

Our varieties of Bruschetta include:

• Heirloom tomato with cracked black pepper
• Mixed heirloom tomato
• Heirloom tomato and sun dried tomato with balsamic vinegar

Ingredients

You'll need the following stuff: (along with a few other things not shown)

Fresh basil.

Tomatoes (we'll be using sun dried tomatoes, and two varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

Fresh garlic

Kosher salt

Extra Virgin olive oil

Balsamic Vinegar

Fresh cracked black pepper

Parmesan cheese

Baguette

Method

Pick off pretty looking leaves from your bunches of basil. Chiffonade the basil leaves. This is a fancy-schmancy way to say shred them into long thing strips. Place the leaves on top of each other and roll it up sideways (along the tip-stem axis of the leaf). Now slice off teeny rolls off the end of the stack until the leaves are all shredded. When the rolls unroll, they will be long thin uniform strips.

You'll want about 2 large leaves per bowl of goop.

After the basil, you'll need to crush three large cloves of garlic.

Peel the clove and remove the root end (the woody hard flat part opposite the pointy end, not too tasty) of the clove. Now, dice the bejabbers out of the garlic. After the garlic has been reduced to 1/8" chunks or smaller, add about 1/8 tsp of salt to each pile of diced garlic. Mix the garlic and salt together a bit. Now, press the blade flat against the knife against the pile and scrape it across the cutting board. This will grind the garlic into mushy goo and mix in the salt at the same time. Scrape up the garlic/salt mess and put one clove worth of goo in each bowl.

Next, we'll be getting to the tomato part of the recipe. Seed and dice your fresh tomato into 1/4" dice. You'll want a total of 1 cup of diced tomato in each bowl. For the red with pepper mix, you'll want one cup of red. For the mixed heirloom tomato, you'll want 1/2 C red and 1/2 C yellow. For the Heirloom with sun-dried tomato, you'll need 1/2 C red and 1/2 C sun dried. Add the tomato to your bowls of garlic/salt/basil.

Add 2 tsp of extra virgin olive oil to each bowl. Adjust your pepper mill to the finest grind and give 5-10 or so turns of black pepper to the mixed tomato bowl and to the sun dried bowl. Now, open the mill up all the way to get coarse cracked pepper and give 5-10 turns into the red-only bowl. To the sun dried tomato bowl, add 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar. Mix all the bowls until well combined and let them rest for 20 minutes or so at room temp.

Next, you'll want to get out your baguette. Slice 3 slices per serving. Cut at a 45-degree or greater angle for presentation as well as for greater surface area per slice. Toast, broil, or grill the slices until they just start to take some color. You want very crisp and crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Set your slices of toast on a plate and top with some of each type of tomato mixture.

Top the tomato mixture with shaved Parmesan cheese. A vegetable peeler makes a fine cheese shaver. Garnish the plate with shredded Parmesan cheese and some of the shredded basil.

Savor a flavor so sublime that your nipples explode with delight.