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Bruschetta: 3 Ways

Frankie Celenza

Why have one type of bruschetta when you can have tomato, bean and ricotta honey varieties almost as easily?

Tomato Bruschetta

Ingredients

  • 3-4 slices of stale ciabatta bread (or sun-dried ciabatta bread from specialty store)

  • 4 cups water

  • 1 1/2 tablespoon salt

  • 1 pint cherry tomatoes

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

  • 8-10 fresh basil leaves

  • 1 clove garlic, minced

Instructions

  1. Dissolve salt in water. Dunk bread in salty water for 15-30 seconds, until bubbles emerge around the bread. You want the bread to be pliable but still crisp.

  2. Break into individual pieces; slices should yield 9-12 pieces, depending on size. Place bread pieces on a tray.

  3. Place tomatoes between two plastic container tops. Using a serrated knife, slice through the tomatoes to halve them. Add to a bowl, season with salt and drizzle with olive oil. Add torn basil into the tomato mixture, along with garlic. Stir to combine. Set aside until ready to serve.

  4. When ready to serve, spoon some of the liquid from the mixture over 3-4 slices of the bread and top with tomato mixture.

Tomato Bruschetta

Bean Bruschetta

Ingredients

  • 3-4 slices of stale ciabatta bread (or sun-dried ciabatta bread from specialty store)

  • 4 cups water

  • 1 1/2 tablespoon salt

  • 1 can cannellini beans, rinsed

  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

  • 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

  • 1 small bunch fresh sage, stems discarded

Instructions

  1. Dissolve salt in water. Dunk bread in salty water for 15-30 seconds, until bubbles emerge around the bread. You want the bread to be pliable but still crisp.

  2. Break into individual pieces; slices should yield 9-12 pieces, depending on size. Place bread pieces on a tray.

  3. In a bowl, combine 1/2 of the beans, olive oil and salt; smash to your liking. Add more oil as needed to combine. Stir in balsamic vinegar and stir to combine.

  4. Heat a small pan over medium-high heat. Add olive oil to pan and fry sage leaves until crispy, about 20 seconds. Transfer sage leaves to a paper-towel-lined dish. Season sage leaves immediately with salt. Set aside until ready to serve.

  5. When ready to serve, spoon bean mixture onto 3-4 pieces of the bread. Top with whole beans and finish with pieces of fried sage leaf.

Bean Bruschetta

Ricotta Honey Bruschetta

Ingredients

  • 3-4 slices of stale ciabatta bread (or sun-dried ciabatta bread from specialty store)

  • 4 cups water

  • 1 1/2 tablespoon salt

  • 1 cup fresh ricotta cheese

  • Black pepper

  • Honey, to drizzle

Instructions

  1. Dissolve salt in water. Dunk bread in salty water for 15-30 seconds, until bubbles emerge around the bread. You want the bread to be pliable but still crisp.

  2. Break into individual pieces; slices should yield 9-12 pieces, depending on size. Place bread pieces on a tray.

  3. Spoon ricotta onto 3-4 slices of the bread and spread to cover. Crack fresh black pepper over top to taste. Drizzle with honey.

Ricotta Honey Bruschetta
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Transcript

- One, two, three bruschetta and bread that has been dipped directly into the ocean. Join me on this bizarre-o journey. This is super duper cool because you never see it and most of my friends are like why would they sell basically uncrushed breadcrumbs, 'cause that's what this is, it's like a sun-dried ciabatta bread. And the answer is it's for preservation, but the Italians dip this in the water and that's how they like make it edible again so that's what we're gonna do. So we have water here and we'll add some salt to mimic the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. Sun-dried ciabatta bread. The texture you're gonna get is bizarre and wonderful. It's, I don't wanna say mealy, but there's crunch, you can hear it. Well, if we come up here, you can hear it crunch. Right? It's wonderful. Come in with another one, here we go. This is like a 30 second soak, if you will. The most classic bruschetta is tomatoes, garlic, basil. You can grab your delivery tops. Throw a whole bunch of tomatoes in there like this. And then you can put that guy on top. And you can come in with a bread knife like this. And that's gonna give you a whole bunch of tomato halves. Salt. Some olive oil. Do it like that. Let's say we mix it around a bit. Basil, you can cut it, you can tear it, I'm gonna tear it. The garlic you do wanna get a fine mince on though. Garlic in. Bruschetta number one. Bruschetta number two. Cannellini beans. You can soak them overnight and then boil them in water or go straight out of the can and rinse them. Take about half of them and put a little bit of olive oil and some salt to create a mashing environment and what this is gonna do is make a sort of bean paste. To add a pop of color and be traditional, sage. You put the olive oil in the pan and we don't need a lot. See that, that's exactly what you're looking for. Boom. You give it a little flip. All right, that's it so you can kill it and come right onto a towel of paper. Bruschetta number three, ladies and gentlemen, is ricotta honey. Ricotta and honey works because it's essentially milk and honey, and that's all I have to say about that. Okay so some ricotta right on top of the bread like this, right. So let's go all over the place. How about some ricotta on this guy right here, or girl, it could be a girl piece of bread. This is a little bit too strong for the delicateness of my bread. So I think to thin it out a little bit and also to add some acidity 'cause there's not a whole lot going on there, we should hit it with a little bit of balsamic vinegar. This is right here. Here we go. Here come a few of the beans right on top into the glue. You come in with the sage. Just do that. Okay, here we go, right on there. And it can spill over the sides, it's totally fine. We're not done because I totally forgot about pepper. You gotta have the black pepper contrast on the white. And of course honey, and it's yellow. Okay, so here we come in with honey, ricotta honey. Parmesan and honey is also a great combo. Oh yeah. That is not safe for work. The Italians never wanna put anything to waste and when they ride around on their boats for all of August, which the country does and the economy comes to a halt, they carry their bread with them that they drive from home because the ports don't have bread. So they dip the breads into the water and then as they go from port to port, they pick up local ingredients. So this is a wonderful combination of you know, having one item that doesn't go bad and is ready to use with a simple dip into the water and then using what is available to you as a topping.