This colourful, mouth-watering picture is of bruschette, tasty Italian snacks that can be served as aperitivi or as a first course to an evening meal. (We enjoyed some of them last night when two friends came round to dinner, keeping up the Italian tradition of eating together and enjoying convivial company, sadly curtailed in present times.)
Traditionally, a bruschetta is a slice of toasted bread, rubbed with a garlic clove and drizzled with olive oil, but for the gluten-free you can use roasted slices of aubergine instead. We use the olive oil made by our friends Nick and Vivienne White in the village of Canneto near the Watermill. Lois proudly points out that she helped pick the olives at this year’s harvest and that her labours are present in every drop.
She’s been preparing bruschette with our friend Clare Budini-Gattai, from whose family estate in Chianti we buy our Watermill red wine, and who also have extensive olive groves. Together they created five different bruschette with a variety of tastes. In the picture you can see
- Fett’unta – the traditional bruschetta: rubbed with garlic, drizzle of olive oil
- traditional tomato bruschetta: toast rubbed with garlic, then mix of tomato, basil, thyme, parsley and peperoncino, drizzled with olive oil
- a mixture of cannellini beans, rosemary, garlic, lemon, olive oil, and topped with walnuts and another drizzle of olive oil
- roasted aubergine with olive oil, white wine vinegar, garlic, parsley and mint
- creamy goat’s cheese, with oregano, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, then topped with pine nuts, and drizzled with honey.
Each is seasoned to taste with salt and pepper.
Lois has made a short video son how these delicious Italian snacks can be assembled. It is part of a series of videos we are making called Italian cooking, Watermill style, in which we show you how to prepare the delicious dishes that we serve during our creative courses at the Watermill. It is in response to the clamour by our guests for a Watermill cookbook. Lois is busy making the videos at the moment and will tell you all about this project later in the year.
In the meantime, why not try a few bruschette for yourself? One of the secrets is to use only the very best olive oil. Even better, why not come on one of our creative courses and sample ours? More details of all that can be found by clicking here.