Italy Starter – Bruschetta

For our first foray into this global adventure, we picked one of our favourite cuisines — Italian! What better starter than the humble but delicious bruschetta?

For this dish, of course feel free to bake your own baguette if you have the skills — we used a local bakery, Davies of Mumbles in Swansea. Their bread is exceptional and gave the bruschetta a wonderful base.

The topping is a simple combination of ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. The key is using the best quality tomatoes you can find — this is a dish where the ingredients really do the talking.

The tomatoes were roughly chopped and tossed with torn basil, a good glug of extra virgin olive oil and seasoning, then left to macerate for 20 minutes to let all the flavours meld together.

The bread was sliced, drizzled with olive oil and toasted until golden and crispy. A halved garlic clove was rubbed over each slice while still warm — this is the step that makes all the difference!

The tomato mixture was then piled generously on top and served immediately.

Sometimes the simplest things really are the best. This was the perfect start to Italy week!

Let us know if you give this a go — we’d love to hear from you.