Crostini - 3 ways

By Jarr315

Ingredients

• Three large beef tomatoes
• One red onion
• Six slices of pastrami
• One yellow pepper
• Two zucchini
• Three mini mozzarella balls
• One chilli
• Two cloves of garlic
• Basil
• Tomato & red pepper crostini

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from jennieeatsitaly.com

Preparation

Step 1

For lunch today I made three different crostini - classic tomato, red onion and basil, pepper and pastrami, and zucchini and mozzarella.

All you have to do with this one is finely chop up your tomatoes and onion and put in a bowl with oodles of olive oil, torn up basil and some salt and pepper. Pop it in the fridge to let the flavors mix.

I challenge anyone to find a better smell than that of a pepper grilling in the oven. Oh my actual word. Just pop your grill on high, wash your pepper and chuck it in the oven. The beauty of this is you don’t have to panic when the skin goes black because that’s what you want. As soon as you see black, turn it round - until it’s all quite black and smelling of heaven. Then take it out (switch the grill OFF) and pop it in a bowl with glad wrap (cling film) over the top. In the meantime, finely slice your pastrami. When I do this I seem to eat more than I save. After about five minutes take your pepper out of the bowl and start to disassemble it. You can pull the stalk out easily, and try to get rid of the seeds without it falling back into the bowl with all of those lovely pepper juices. The oily liquid that comes out of grilled peppers is full of flavour so save it. Peel the skin off your pepper and chop it finely. Put it back in the juice with the pastrami and mix with some torn basil.
This is a lighter topping which is quite nice to have against the other flavours on the platter. Take a good quality peeler and start peeling your zucchini into ribbons. Finely chop your garlic and chilli (removing the seeds) and pop into a hot oiled pan. Once softened add the zucchini, stir and take off the eat straight away. Leave to cool and then add thin strips of fresh mozzarella.

And then of course all you need is your bread. All you have to do is cut it into 2cm slices. Heat up a none stick frying pan with oil and cover the surface with bread slices. Wait until toasted and turn. Repeat with your next batch until you’re done.

I invite you to try your own crostini over the weekend - look how happy they make me!