Tomato and Basil Bruschetta


Ingredients:

3 medium size tomatoes, diced
1/3 cup fresh basil, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 French Baguette (or 1/2 loaf Italian bread)
1 large garlic clove, halved
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese, (optional)
Salt and ground black pepper to taste


Preparation:

  • Combine tomatoes, basil and minced garlic. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 
  • Cover and refrigerate for up to 3 hours.
  • Slice bread in 1 inch thick slices.
  • Place on baking sheet and broil until lightly browned on each side.
  • Rub one side of bread with cut side of garlic clove, brush with olive oil and spoon tomato mixture over top.
  • Sprinkle with Parmesan (optional).
  • Broil brushchetta for 1 minute.
  • Serve hot.

Makes 4 servings.



Real Cooking
Did You Know?
In the earliest times bread was cooked under the embers. The use of ovens was introduced into Europe by the Romans, who had found them in Egypt. But, notwithstanding this importation, the old system of cooking was long after employed, for in the tenth century Raimbold, abbot of the monastery of St. Thierry, near Rheims, ordered in his will that on the day of his death bread cooked under the embers panes subcinericios should be given to his monks.

By feudal law the lord was bound to bake the bread of his vassals, for which they were taxed, but the latter often preferred to cook their flour at home in the embers of their own hearths, rather than to carry it to the public oven.

It would be difficult to point out the exact period at which leavening bread was adopted in Europe, but we can assert that in the Middle Ages it was anything but general. Yeast, which, according to Pliny, was already known to the Gauls, was reserved for pastry, and it was only at the end of the sixteenth century that the bakers of Paris used it for bread.