Last week, I mentioned how excited I was to start making fancy toast. I watched a few YouTube videos for inspiration and came across a video with Brad, a chef from Bon Appetit. The guy is a total crack up and down to earth, making cooking look so fun and easy, which it is.
I learn from watching and wanted to replicate his fancy toast. He used a baguette, ricotta cheese, garlic cloves, sugar bomb tomatoes, a couple of Calabrian hot peppers, olive oil, salt & pepper.
When I went to Aldi on Friday after making deliveries, I was dumbfounded when I saw they had the same tomatoes the chef used. This meant I HAD to make this fancy toast now.
The only thing I did differently from his the first time was whipping my ricotta cheese with a handheld beater for a minute, making the cheese smooth, light, and creamy.
I threw the tomatoes, whole garlic, and a few hot chili flakes in a cast iron pan with olive oil, salt & pepper. The tomatoes began to blister just like he did, and the garlic started to roast inside its skin.
The chef was cooking in a professional kitchen and didn’t give two shits what kind of mess he made; I partially covered the skillet when the tomatoes started to splatter not to make a big mess in my kitchen.
When the tomatoes looked done, I took them and the garlic out of the pan. I removed the tomatoes from the vines and took the garlic out of its skin.
Next, I chopped up the garlic, mashed it into a paste, and then folded it into the whipped ricotta with a splash of olive oil, salt, & pepper.
I took an Against the Grain gluten-free baguette and placed it in the cast iron pan, soaking up some oil and juices. Then I put the baguette under the broiler.
Just like the chef did, I smeared the toasted baguette with the ricotta topped with the blistered tomatoes. He added a few fresh basil leaves, which I didn’t have but used a refrigerated basil paste.
The results were delicious! It tasted exactly as I imagined it would. Ok, maybe even a whole lot better.
Since I still had the other half of the sugar bomb tomatoes to use, I made the fancy toast again, but this time I added a balsamic reduction syrup which added a sweetness that pushed the fancy toast to another flavor level. OMG!
This will be something I make whenever I find those sugar bomb tomatoes on the vine or in the summer when fresh grape or cherry tomatoes are available since regular tomatoes won’t work.
If I didn’t watch that Bon Appetit YouTube video, I never would have looked at the sugar bombs twice. I am so happy I did!
While we were eating, I could imagine that if a cafe had this fancy toast on its menu as a small plate, people would go crazy over it. The good news is. We don’t need a restaurant to make it; we can make it ourselves! 🍅 💣
The BEST!
Yum‼️