Tomato Basil Crostini

Heather RyanWe've been getting bunches of basil in our CSA box for the past two weeks, and it has become difficult to find things to do with all the basil before it goes bad. I know the standby is to make pesto, and I've done that. But there is only so much pesto one mother can make. We were also getting beautiful tomatoes at the farmers market, and so I decided that I'd find a quick and easy recipe to make something that the kids might like and Tomato Basil Crostini looked great.

The problem is that the only kid who likes tomatoes in the family is Chloe.

Be that as it may, I decided to plow ahead with the recipe. The benefits to this should be obvious to anyone: it's quick, easy, has six total ingredients, and none of them are obscure or hard to obtain or expensive. The only downside was that the house was warm from the hot summer day, and the oven was going to have to be on for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.
Giselle and I laid baguette slices onto a non-stick baking sheet and drizzled them with olive oil.

There was a small glitch: there recipe says you need 1 clove of garlic, but it does not tell you what to do with said garlic. I read the recipe twice, mostly to avoid the Baked Almond French Toast debacle from a previous week. And then I reasoned that I could finely chop the garlic and sprinkle it on top of the baguette slices. I also sprinkled on a little kosher salt.

While the bread was toasting, Chloe chopped the tomatoes. Ivan and Giselle, the non-tomato lovers-looked on with interest and a little disgust. I had decided to half the recipe bread-wise, but after Chloe had chopped 1 1/2 tomatoes, it was clear we'd need more. We ended up going with the full amount of both tomatoes and basil. It's summer, and the tomatoes are wonderful, and Chloe and I wanted to savor them on our toasted baguettes.

As soon as the baguette slices were golden brown, we pulled them from the oven. Chloe took a piece first, and spooned on tomato, then added a sprinkle of basil and then parmesan cheese. Almost everything fell off before the bread made it to her mouth. So, we improvised. I took the tomatoes and basil, mixed them together in a bowl, and added a few tablespoons of olive oil. The result looked a bit like salsa, and we spooned that onto the bread, sprinkled with Parmesan, and ate it. The garlic was cooked and hadn't burned, and it was just enough on each slice to add a wonderful pungent flavor that complemented the basil and tomatoes.

The simple dish was excellent, and the quick improvisation meant that the tomatoes and basil stayed on the bread better. The basil also melded with the tomatoes over 10 or 15 minutes because of mixing them. In the future, I'll make this mix first and let it sit while the bread is toasting.

Ivan and Giselle politely declined to sample the tomato and basil toasts (or, rather, scrunched up their faces when presented with a pile of tomato and basil on bread). They declared, though, that the bread was delicious, and ate several slices. Maybe someday I can convince them to give tomatoes another chance.

Then again, maybe it's better if they don't -- more for Chloe and me.

Make the tomato basil crostini recipe.