Bruschetta with Summer Squash, Bacon and Blue Cheese

Summary

Yield
SourceCook's Illustrated
Prep Time30 minutes

Description

great as a meal or an appetizer !!

Ingredients

  • 1 loaf country bread sliced 1 inch pieces
  • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 large clove garlic
  • 4 medium summer squash or zucchini halved lenghtwise and cut into matchstick pieces
  • 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tsp table salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 4 oz blue cheese crumbled
  • 1⁄4 c basil leaves, chopped
  • 1⁄4 c crisped bacon, chopped

Instructions

1. Adjust oven rack to about 4 inches from heating element and heat broiler; broil bread slices until golden brown on both sides. Brush both sides of each slice with oil and rub with garlic clove. 2. Combine squash and/or zucchini, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper in medium bowl; let stand 5 minutes, then toss in bacon, cheese, and basil. 3. Divide mixture evenly among bread slices; broil bruschetta until cheese begins to melt, about 1 1/2 minutes. Serve immediately.

Notes

Toast the bread as close as possible to the time at which you plan to assemble the bruschetta. If you prefer, grill the bread. After trimming the ends, you should have 8 to 10 slices. The topped bruschetta goes back under the broiler for a couple of minutes before being served.

Ingredients

Garlic

garlic.jpg
Garlic is an amazing crop that not only adds wonderful flavor to anything you cook, it has many healing properties. I know many people that eat raw garlic to fight away colds and other symptoms. Garlic is also one of the easier crops for us to grow. We plant the seeds in early Fall and store them in the ground under a nice layer of mulch. a few weeks before we harvest the garlic from the ground we pick off the "scapes" which is essentially the flower. We snap this off to cause the plant to produce a larger bulb. The best part is you can eat the scapes. After we havest the garlic we cure it hanging in our barn so that it will store for the rest of the winter and be ready for planting again in the fall. Almost a third of our garlic crop is saved as seed for the next crop.

Zucchini

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Long green and sometimes yellow fruits are harvested for most of the season. Great on the grill, or baked in a bread.

Yellow Summer Squash

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Yellow squash vibrant and tasty, grilled or sauteed in pasta.

Basil

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We grow succesions of basil so there is always a fresh young crop for picking. We grow the traditional italian basil as well as purple, thai and lemon basil too.
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