Artichoke & Tomato Bruschetta: Tuscany Now Competition

Today on the blog I’m rerunning an old blog post as I’m entering it in the #TuscanyNowCookOff Competition. The prize  is a fabulous weekend away in Florence and cooking class with Anna Bini, an acclaimed Itlaian chef and restauranteur. What an amazing prize! I adore Italian food and cooking and have recently been experimenting making my own gnocchi and pastas..I’m getting better slowly. I’d love to go to Florence as it’s somewhere I’ve never been.

This dish was intially inspired by Rachel Allen from a recipe she made for artichoke salad. I’ve adapted this since I first tried it and serve it on some toasted ciabatta as a lovely twist on a bruschetta.

It relies mainly on ingredients that it’s likely you will already have in the house, simply chop them all up, mix in the dressing ingredients and serve! Perfect for a quick meal, only takes about 10 minutes to do from start to finish. It has real bursts of Mediterranean and Italian flavousr, and I like to eat it imagining I’m sat on a sun drenched Italian balcony, rather than in dreary England!

Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a light lunch or supper.

Ingredients:

• about half of a jar of Artichokes in Olive Oil, chopped
• 1 red pepper from a jar of roasted red peppers in oil, chopped
• 10-12 cherry/plum/heritage/sundried tomatoes(your choice depending on whats in the house), quartered
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp pesto – you can make your own, but store bought is ok!
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and halved
• a few leaves fresh basil, shredded roughly
• 4 slices ciabatta bread, about 1cm thick
• 2 tsp sherry vinegar
• 3 tsp olive oil
• sea salt and black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Heat a griddle pan on the stove. drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the slices of bread. When the pan is hot, put in the slices of bread.
2. Whilst the bread is char grilling. Chop all the tomatoes, onion, artichokes and pepper as described above and mix together in a bowl.
3. Add in the pesto, vinegar and oil and give everything a good stir. Remember to keep an eye on the bread and turn over when toasted on one side!!
4. Season to taste with sea salt and cracked black pepper and at the last minute stir through the shredded basil.
5. Take the bread out of the pan and rub with the halved garlic clove to impart some flavour into the bread.
6. Serve up the mixture onto the ciabatta slices and serve straight away.

Tuscany Now Competition