Anyone remotely interested in good eating needs to be pro-Europe. I mean, when did you last buy a bottle of British extra-virgin olive oil or squeeze a sun-ripened Welsh lemon over your potted shrimps? How drab our cooking would be without the bold flavours and simple cooking of the sunnier bits of Europe.
And how easy it is for the mathematically challenged like myself to shop and cook with a sleek European metric system based on 10's rather than the awkward 16's of that mess known as the imperial system. Of course there are those who choose not to notice that our cooking is going places - while the suits at Waitrose commit themselves wholeheartedly to organic produce and Sainsbury signs up the groovy Jamie Oliver, dear old Tesco has reverted to showing pounds and ounces in their stores. But even the most deep-rooted Anglophile could surely fail to be moved by just one mouthful of the garlic-scented toasted bread known as bruschetta. Or, for the benefit of the decision-makers at Tesco, 'something-foreign-on-toast'.
Bruschetta is Euro-toast. This doesn't mean the untanned, bendy stuff you get with your breakfast Nescafé in Greece (how do they get it like that?), but thick slices of golden, open-textured bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil. You find it in different guises everywhere from Bologna to Birmingham, but it hails from Italy. Unlike a round of Hovis, bruschetta positively reeks of sunshine and will cheer up this dismal, mean little summer.
You can have it plain, if you can call crusty Tuscan bread dripping with unctuous oil plain, or you can chuck any sun-ripened ingredient from tomatoes to aubergines on it. The only rule is that it should taste of the sun. By which I suppose I mean it should have seen some fruity olive oil and young garlic. Whereas there is much safety in Britain's dowdy poached-egg-on-toast, there is an unmistakable joie de vivre in even the simplest bruschetta.
Strictly speaking, bruschetta is nowt but toasted bread, garlic and olive oil and is what the Italians in the north call fettunta or panunto. At its most splendid, when eaten with pungent new oil, it is the star of the show at the festa that follows the first autumn pressing of the new season's olives. As the oil flows from the press, thick wedges of the grilled bread ( bruscare means 'to grill') are rubbed with juicy garlic cloves and doused with the warmly vibrant oil.
The bread you use will depend on what you can get, but an open-textured white loaf such as the saltless pane toscano or even ciabatta is perfect - its open texture soaks up the emerald liquid like a sponge. I often use a sourdough loaf for the little snap of yeasty astringency that comes with it.
Anyone who has wondered exactly when to use that absurdly expensive bottle of estate bottled olive oil they purchased in a rash moment might like to use it now. There is no better way of getting the full fruity onslaught of the oil than here. The idea is to slice the bread thicker than you would for something-on-toast and to grill it so that the edges char here and there. You want the crust to be crisp, the inside moist and steamy. The garlic must be new. This doesn't necessarily mean green, just plump with plenty of sweet, mild juice.
The trick is to pick a plump clove from a tight head and cut in half widthwise. Push the cut side down on the surface of the toast and scrape it across the rough bread. You won't get a fat lot of juice from it. In fact, you may wonder why you bothered - until you taste it. We are after more than a whiff but less than a stink here. Now douse it with oil. Some of it will dribble through the holes, so mind your clothes, but you should use enough that you can almost suck the oil from the bread. This is why it is essential that the oil you choose is one you love rather simply like.
We shouldn't stop here. The tomatoes that have finally seen a bit of sun will do, well squashed with salt and black pepper and piled on to this hot toast. This is one occasion when I don't mind the skins. My favourite at the moment is a bruschetta of roasted aubergine, garlic and feta cheese (see recipe). It's highly inauthentic, of course, but authenticity isn't always all it's cracked up to be. No one can tell me that velvet aubergine, sweet garlic, crisp hot toast and salty white cheese isn't a good eat.
We are talking about big flavours - the anchovies, tomatoes, garlic, peppery olive oils and olives so redolent of the hotter parts of Europe. There is nothing refined about this sort of toast - this is not breakfast at the vicarage. Generosity is as much an ingredient here as the bread itself. I have taken to having a slice of bruschetta for lunch - it is the best use for a ciabatta I know. If the simplicity of the bread and oil doesn't appeal, then you can get carried away: try adding a little crushed dried chilli to the oil or a few spikes of young rosemary and thyme leaves, very finely chopped.
Tomatoes, either skinned and chopped or roasted till soft and sweet, are an obvious contender to sit astride your hot toast, though even that isn't strictly necessary. I would also vote for crushed anchovies tossed with greens such as rocket, or even some mushrooms cooked in a little butter and oil with thyme and lemon, piled lavishly on top. I have used a sweet bread such as a buttermilk loaf or panettone as a base for summer fruits - lusciously ripe peaches or apricots, say - and have even been known to smother my toast in a richly purple compote of warm summer berries. Big-flavoured, full of sunshine and simple to do. Not very British, I'm afraid.
Bruschetta with roasted aubergine, basil and feta
Serves 2
2 medium-sized aubergines
extra-virgin olive oil
8 cloves of garlic
half a lemon
a good handful of basil leaves
100g feta
4 thick slices of bread from an interesting loaf
handful of olives
Wipe the aubergines - a pleasing task - and cut off their prickly stems. Slice the fruit in half lengthways, then cut each half lengthways into four. Chop each piece widthways into five or six short, fat pieces and throw them into a baking dish with a good half-cupful of olive oil. Tuck the garlic, unpeeled, in among the aubergines, then squeeze over the lemon and toss it all together with a grinding of salt and pepper (I leave the squeezed shell in with the aubergines). Bake for 50 minutes or so at 200 C/gas mark 6, turning it once or twice, until the aubergine is golden.
Tear up the basil leaves and toss them with the aubergine and the feta, roughly crumbled. Squeeze the garlic from its skin - you won't get much, but what you get will be sweet and mellow. Toast or grill the bread - you want some crusty, blackened edges, I think - squash the garlic over, then drizzle the olive oil from the baking dish over the toast, and divide the aubergine and feta between them. Scatter over a few olives.
Roasted vine tomato bruschetta with black olives
A recipe from The Big Red Book of Tomatoes by Lindsey Bareham (£8.99, Penguin), which has just been published in paperback. Serves 4.
500g cherry tomatoes, on the vine, in clusters
2 tbsp olive oil, mixed with 2 tsp of chopped
thyme leaves
4 thick slices of sourdough bread
1 plump, juicy garlic clove, halved
6-8 tbsp olive oil
20 black olives, stoned and roughly chopped,
or 3 tbsp black olive paste
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 400 C/gas mark 6, or pre-heat the grill. Place the tomatoes on a piece of foil resting on a baking sheet, and use a pastry brush to smear them with the olive oil and thyme - or grill for about 10 minutes or until the skins begin to split and the juices run.
Meanwhile, toast the bread and rub the hot toast on one side with the garlic. Dribble generously with olive oil. Strew the toast with the chopped olives or spread with the olive paste, lay the tomatoes over the top, pressing them gently with the back of a fork into the toast. Season with a crumble of sea-salt flakes and plenty of black pepper. Grated Parmesan is good, too.
Fruit bruschetta
Serves 4
225g redcurrants
100g blackcurrants
4 tbsp caster sugar
450g raspberries, tayberries or loganberries
4 thick slices of open-textured bread (ciabatta
would be good here)
Put the currants, having first removed their stalks, into a stainless-steel saucepan with 2 tbsp of water and the sugar. Bring slowly to the boil. When the currants start to burst and flood the pan with colour, tip in the raspberries, loganberries, or whatever. Simmer for no longer than 2 minutes, then set aside.
Grill or toast the bread on both sides. You want it to be quite soft and chewy in the centre. Put each one in a shallow dish, shake a few drops of cassis, brandy or Kirsch (just a very little, it can easily overpower) on the surface, then spoon over the warm fruits.
Overleaf, Sue Webster on where to find bruschetta, ciabatta and sourdough bread
