Recipe: Make your own light, fresh bruschetta

MANILA, Philippines — Planning on going light and healthy? You can start with breakfast. Instead of taking a heavy rice meal, such as tapsilog (tapa, sinangag at itlog), for breakfast, go light with slices of bread with tomato, basil leaves and cheese topping. It is called bruschetta, a light, fresh and easy go-to breakfast or snack food. Besides being easy to prepare, bruschetta tastes good and you can make a lot of variations depending on the toppings that you use. Basic bruschetta is diced tomatoes, basil chiffonade, grated or shredded cheese, fresh garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. But you can also add sliced mushrooms, chopped cooked shrimps, blanched spinach and several other fresh ingredients.

For the toasted bread base, the best option is baguette sliced diagonally into one-inch thick slices. But you can use ciabatta, batard or sourdough. It works as well as a French baguette for Bruschetta.

This version of mine is as easy as you can go with Bruschetta.

Bruschetta

Ingredients:

2 pcs. ripe tomatoes

salt and pepper

6-7 pcs. fresh basil leaves

1/3 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

6 slices baguette or batard

extra virgin olive oil

1-2 cloves fresh garlic, peeled

Procedure:

1. Wash and pat-dry tomatoes. Slice, remove seeds, and then dice the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Prepare basil chiffonade. Place basil leaves one on top of the other.

3. Roll like a cigar.

4. Slice into very thin strips or chiffonade.

5. Separate the strips.

6. Grate or shred your Parmesan cheese if it is whole.

7. Lightly toast bread.

8. Rub one side of the toasted bread slices with fresh garlic clove to give the bread a hint of garlic flavor and aroma.

9. Sprinkle with a little shredded cheese,

10. Then layer with diced tomatoes, basil chiffonade and more cheese.

11. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

12. Toast for 2 minutes and enjoy!

Makes 6 bruschettas.