This dish is both tangy and crunchy and filled with umami, all while boasting just a touch of sweetness. It’s easy to prepare. Especially if you already have the tomatoes and or roasted garlic on hand.

This is a four-part recipe with three ingredients that need to be prepped and baked, which seems intimidating. However, we pulled together these recipes because all three of these steps can easily piggyback on one another.

That means we can roast the tomatoes, roast the garlic, and bake the crostini bread at the same temperature simultaneously, but pull them out at different baking times.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Times:

• Tomato Confit: 2 hours
• Roasted Garlic: 1 hour
• Crostini: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 lb cherry tomatoes. We chose a rainbow of local tomatoes.
• 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons separated of Milanese Gremolata Olive Oil for roasting
• A drizzle of White Truffle Oil to taste
• 2 tablespoons of Pomegranate Balsamic or less to taste
• 4 heads of garlic, three left whole and one peeled for roasting
• A handful of sage, thyme, and basil leaves
• One baguette sliced into half-inch-thick slices. We choose a seed bread baguette for added texture, flavor, and health benefits.
• Sea salt for sprinkling

Easy Peasy with a Bit of Patience

Roasted Tomato Directions:

This recipe is perfect to pull together if you’ve got an afternoon with other tasks going on. Simply set timers and add each item into the oven as needed.

Our tomatoes will take the longest, so we’ll work on prepping them and getting them into the oven.

1. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
2. Slice all your tomatoes in half and toss in a bowl with your two tablespoons of Milanese Gremolata Olive Oil and a little salt and pepper.
3. Layout your tomatoes onto your roasting pan and slip in your peeled garlic cloves as well as sprigs of thyme, and leaves or sage, and basil spread throughout the pan.
4. Roast tomatoes for two hours. Pull from the oven and allow the tomatoes to cool at room temp.

You can store these tomatoes in a tightly fitting container, along with the flavorful olive oil that you roasted them in for about two weeks. Around here, they don’t usually last that long as they can be used in so many ways outside this easy appetizer!

We often will double or even triple and bulk prepare these to keep in the freezer to add to just about any dish, soups, salads, pasta. You name it, so versatile!

An Oven is Garlic’s Best Friend

This is our favorite part, the amazing smells from the roasted garlic will fill your home with the most delicious scent and definitely test your patience as you’ll want to enjoy this goodness as soon as it is done, but we assure you it is worth the wait for that first, perfectly layered bite.

Garlic Directions:

1. With a sharp knife, slice the garlic head just below the tops of all the garlic cloves. This will leave a small opening at the top of every clove. This opening will help the cloves steam and not explode in their little jackets.
2. Rub the inside of your baking dish with olive oil. Place your three garlic heads into a baking dish. Drizzle each head with the remaining oil and cover the baking dish with aluminum foil or an oven-safe lid.
3. Add the garlic to your preheated oven along with our roasted tomatoes, but remove the garlic after an hour when it is good and toasted.

It’s the Final Countdown

The final step before building our beautiful crostinis is to toast our bread. The bread does not need to be served warm and, in fact, a little air drying after makes for a sturdier appetizer surface. Baguettes are definitely not made to be refrigerated so keep your bread on the counter or in the freezer for maximum freshness. However, with crostinis as Weill croutons, stale bread works fabulously in it’s crunchy favor.

Some like to brush their bread with olive oil before toasting, and you are welcome to do the same. It is divine and makes the bread even more delicious, but we often skip the extra olive oil because we will add it in the end with all of our ingredients.

Crostini Directions:

1. Spread your baguette slices out on a roasting pan and place them into the oven in the final 30 minutes of your tomatoes.
2. Bake for 15 minutes and then flip to the other side. Crostinis should be browned and a bit crunchy.
3. Allow the crostinis to cool to room temperature along with all roasted ingredients.

The crostinis can be made a week in advance and stored in a sealed container at room temperature or made a few weeks ahead and kept on hand in the freezer.

Layers, Layers, Layers

It is time to build our crostinis! If you are building this the same day, you roasted everything. You won’t have to let anything thaw. However, if you froze ahead of time, you would want all your ingredients to come back to room temperature before building your appetizers.

Assembling Directions:

1. Take a sharp knife and puncture the garlic clove sections. This will make it easier for you to scoop out and spread the garlic.
2. Take a butter knife, scoop out a clove of garlic, and spread across the crostini. Do this for all of your garlic cloves, and if you have a few leftover bread slices, you can save them to use as croutons.
3. After spreading the garlic, it is time to layer on the tomatoes. Four or five tomato slices will give good coverage, but if you have leftover tomatoes, you can add more onto each piece till they pile over, or you can save them for another dish.
4. Lastly, drizzle your beautifully layered crostinis with a few drops each of truffle oil and pomegranate balsamic.
5. Dust with a sprinkle of kosher salt or sea salt and get ready to chow down.

This combination will amp up the aromatics and bring all the flavors together for the perfect sweet, savory, umami, and crunchy finish in every bite.

Ready, set, crunch!

This dish is perfect for pulling together from the freezer for unexpected guests or whipping up in an afternoon just for a nibble before a family meal. This recipe is not labor-intensive, takes just a little bit of patience, and you get to reap the rewards of a perfectly balanced bite-sized treat using a few simple ingredients and your oven.

Estero Bay Olive Oils and Teas provides you with the perfect heart-healthy olive oils and flavorful balsamics for creating the perfect dish for any occasion.

Whether you are hosting guests, preparing for your family to sit down together, or simply creating something fast and delicious, Estero Bay’s wide range of olive oils and balsamics can help you make magic in those spare moments of your busy day.

External Source

https://www.stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/18934