Let's Make Bruschetta

IT'S TOMATO SEASON, MOTHERF*CKER.

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Am I the kind of guy who goes to foreign countries and takes pictures of the local produce? Absolutely.

There are a lot of more important things happening in the world, of course, but here in Central California, tomato season has already begun. I started picking my first early girls, celebrities, and even a couple romas midway through last week. Don’t get too jealous if you live somewhere where it isn’t tomato season yet, it’s also nightmarishly hot here. Well into the high 90s this week, and we had our first triple-digit day before it was even June. There are also other reasons why it’s bad!

Where was I? Oh right, tomatoes! There’s nothing like an actually fresh one. Those hot house ones you buy during winter aren’t even really the same fruit. I plant mine in late winter and then wait wait wait patiently as can be for three months and then all of a sudden BOOM, I have more than I know what to do with, at least for about a month. Then I think, okay, now what? It helps to have a plan.

Simpler is better when you’ve got great tomatoes (…he said euphemistically), and for me there are two easy recipe options head and shoulders above the rest: bruschetta and pan con tomate, its grated Spanish cousin. Ingredient-wise, they’re the same: tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt. I go back and forth about which I like best. I think I might give pan con tomate a slight edge if I’m only eating, but bruschetta is maybe a little more enjoyable to make; not as messy, and I don’t have that moment of pain when that last bit of tomato doesn’t make it into my mouth. Slicing feels a little less messy than grating.

Anyway, bruschetta time.

Ingredients

• A couple tomatoes (the sweeter the better)

• A couple cloves of garlic (reserve another to rub the bread)

• A couple pieces of bread

• Good olive oil

Equipment

• Sharp knife

• Bowl

• Pan/oven/toaster/toaster oven

• Spoon (unless you want to get your hands messy)

Notes on proportions:

I probably wouldn’t normally go with a 1:1 garlic clove-to-tomato ratio (probably 1:2-ish), but I grew this garlic myself, and homegrown garlic, especially the purple kind like this, is milder than the kind from the store. So I use more of it. You don’t need homegrown garlic, any kind is fine, as long as it’s not the pre-diced or minced kind from a jar that’s been soaking in citric acid.

Notes on olive oil:

Look, I’m not trying to be Mr. Fussy Guy here but this is a recipe with three ingredients in it and so it’s kind of important that they be the good kind. What’s a good olive oil? Well, in this case, I’d probably look for a local brand, or if they don’t have those near you, more of a boutique brand or an import. Go someplace where you can sample some out of a dumb little cup. For everyday oil that you’re going to cook with (ie, heat up) you don’t need the fancy stuff, since you won’t be able to taste all the subtleties anyway. But in a room-temperature dish like this (or in salad dressing, or for dipping bread) it does actually make a world of difference. Ideally, you want an oil buttery and nutty enough to round out the tomato’s acid, and grassy enough to add an herb note. I haven’t tasted all of the supermarket brands (which would be expensive, at like $20 a bottle these days), I’m sure there’s an okay one in there somewhere. Just don’t try to taste them in the store, that’ll probably get you arrested. See? The bougie store with the dumb little tasting cups has its place.

ANYWAY~!

Directions

Cut your tomatoes into little cubes. (I’m not going to go into the details here, I’m sure you can figure it out).

Add a healthy pinch of salt to your cubes (probably a little more than you would if you were seasoning tomatoes alone — remember, you’re going to add some unseasoned olive oil to this which will wash out some of the seasoning).

Give that a little stir with your spoon. It’s not that important, but doing it in this order gives that salt a chance to get into your tomatoes, which will then release some of their water for the “dressing” and concentrate the sweetness in the tomato pieces.

Add your garlic. I don’t personally think it matters whether you slice, grate, mince or smash. My preferred method is to cut off the little end cap, then pop it with a knife:

From there, the skin usually comes off in more or less one piece. I remove it, then smash the garlic again and give it a quick mince. If I have the peeled stuff I might slice, grate, or mince, but it’s more for looks than anything else. I don’t get too fussy with this bit.

Now add that garlic to your salted tomatoes, pour over your olive oil, and mix.

How much olive oil? I dunno, use your brain. I like a pretty good amount, enough that all of the tomato cubes have visible olive oil coating them.

The Bread

If I was being as fussy about the bread as I was everything else, I’d go get a nice sourdough loaf from the bakery. A sourdough loaf that’s a couple days stale, just kissed on a charcoal grill, is probably ideal for bruschetta. But my closest bakery only sells whole loaves three days a week and I was very hungry, so I just grabbed a sweet french loaf off the supermarket shelf.

I love bread fried in a thin layer of olive oil, but I was out of the cheap stuff and I didn’t want to waste that much of the good stuff on this (especially at the height of tomato season!). Also my grill is dirty and it was hot outside so I just buttered the sumbitch instead and grilled it up on one side. (Could you go both sides? Would it be better? Probably, but again, hungry).

Once that’s nice and toasty, cut the end off your smallest, most insignificant clove of garic, do your best to grasp it between your big, clumsy sausage fingers, and grate it along the rough bread surface like you’re grating cheese, or a plantar wart.

Now grab your tomato/garlic/oil mixture, and spoon on as much of it as your piece of bread can hold. It’s okay if it starts getting the bread soggy, that’s kind of the point.

It’s perfect. If this was video, I’d take a big bite and make that “oh this is so good” face that every one of your followers secretly hates. Can we replace that with something? It’s always either gross or phony.

Wait, that’s it?

Yes, that’s it! I used to think bruschetta needed an acid, like lemon juice or vinegar, but on a reporting trip to Italy a few months ago, I noticed that they added neither and it seemed to be better for it. Yes, that mostly had to do with how good the tomatoes and olive oil are there (see banner image), but it’s also not to say that everything Europeans do with food is good and correct and superior to ignorant America (usually it’s true, but not always). In fact, I’m pretty sure most of the versions I had in Lucca didn’t have garlic (or maybe just a garlic rub on the bread with no additional garlic), and about two-thirds included dried oregano.

I know the Italian stereotype of Italian-American food is that we put way too much garlic in everything, and that’s generally true, and garlic is absolutely a crutch in some dishes, but also if I could only have garlic in one dish for the rest of my life it’d probably be this one. As for the oregano… gonna be a no from me, dog. I use it in a lot of things, including last night’s carnitas, but I don’t really know why you’d take a beautiful fresh thing and add a dried spice to it. It’s fine. If you really love dried oregano that much, go for it. (*dumb guy voice*) Ayyy, I’m from New Yawk, we puttit on da pizza pie!

Other Common Additions, Ranked

• Black pepper

Sure, why not? I say fine, if not necessary. You could just use a more peppery olive oil. Whatever!

• Fresh Basil

Tastes great with basil, and I’m generally pro-basil, but bruschetta also tastes great without basil. And if the tomatoes and olive oil are really good, I think the basil distracts ever-so-slightly more than it adds. (I have it in my garden, I’ve done the side by side. To each their own though).

• Parmesan or Pecorino Romano

Good on mostly everything, rarely a bad thing, but mostly the same thoughts as above. Save it for the avocado toast, imo.

• Fresh Mozzarella

Good? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely not. Save it for the caprese salad.

• Lemon, Balsamic Vinegar, red wine vinegar.

See above. They’re fine, but to me if the tomatoes are nice and ripe they don’t really need more sweetness or acid.

• Red Onions

I love this for pico de gallo or mediterranean salad, but for bruschetta I’d rather just keep it simple and tomato-focused.

That’s it for the most common ones (acknowledging that there are about a thousand other different, amazing things you can put on toast). Keep in mind that I’ll probably re-read this in 18-24 months and disagree with everything that I’ve written here.

Okay, this has been fun. I bid a merry tomato season to you all.