Stale Bread, Garlic, and Over-ripe Tomatoes

Let’s not over romanticise this too much; bruschetta or bread and tomatoes whatever you’d like to call it was invented as a vehicle to avoid waste.  Clever cooks of yore took some stale bread, rubbed garlic on it, and covered it with ripe juicy tomatoes and olive oil.

Turns out it was delicious; but that should be no surprise with good ingredients at the core of the dish.  More often than not we’ll have some tomatoes just on the turn in our fridge; in actual fact there’s usually a bendy carrot as well but I’ve not found a use for that yet...

Any that have split are perfect for this, the riper and uglier the better.  You’ll want some stale bread as well; we had some left over sourdough from Gail’s which was perfect for the job.

Put the oven on low and throw in some sliced bread to dry and become really crisp without browning too much.  Whilst the bread is drying out pop a pan of water on to boil then cut a little cross in the base of the toms and drop them in when the water is boiling fiercely.

The shock of the hot water will help take the skins of easily so only put them in for about 30 seconds.  Peel, core, and deseed the fuckers and put to one side.

I like my garlic a lot so I'm actually adding some to the tomato mix; traditionally you’d just rub the dry bread with a cut clove but that’s just seems a bit pervy to me so I'm throwing it all in.

By now the bread should be really nice and crisp so chop up the sweet tomato flesh and mix in your garlic.  Shovel onto the bread and drizzle, liberally, with good olive oil and sprinkle on salt to taste!

Ingredients for one as a snack:

3 Ripe, split, heritage type tomatoes – Imported supermarket greenhouse fuckers will not cut it here.

2 Cloves of Garlic

2 Slices of Stale and Toasted Sourdough

Olive Oil

Salt