Food #ICook | Tomato Bruschetta Shiha Style

This dish is super simple to make, vegetarian (not that I am) and surprisingly very filling. I could just eat this for lunch or dinner and be a happy camper.

Actually I'm also not too sure if it can be considered as a bruschetta hence the title :P. I am Shiha by the way.

Well, the last thing I want to do is upset a purist Italian cooking foodie. I'm just a hungry girl who happens to find Italian food very appetizing with very limited access to proper Italian ingredients considering I'm living in a Malaysian suburb, so please excuse me hehe ^^

According to Jamie Oliver, bruschetta is a kind of open sandwich made using country-style sourdough bread, grilled, rubbed with garlic, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, seasoned with black pepper and salt served with various types of toppings.

Meanwhile, my version only uses store-bought baguettes usually from the Giant Supermarket or La Boheme bakery in AEON mall lol. But I do compensate this by using the reddest and luscious-looking tomatoes I could get my hands on. 

I know what you're thinking: Even the bread is french, what's Italian about this? *sigh* 

Me: The idea is.. (how corny lol :P)

For the base, I make garlic bread from the baguette because I just love them with anything. I've posted the recipe here whilst for the toppings,

I used:

3 very large and very red tomatoes, roughly chopped into big chunks (feeds 2 very hungry people)

1/4 cup  of Sunflower oil as olive oil substitute

1 large clove of garlic, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

Dried herbs of any kind, I used mixed herbs.

1 tsp sugar

Crushed black pepper and salt to taste.

Cooking it:

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan.

2. Tomatoes in first. Give it a stir and push all the chunks apart in the pan to avoid them from crowding, steaming up and turn soupy. Just use the proper pan size according to the amount of tomatoes you use; I could've used a slightly bigger one here :P

3. Sprinkle some dried herbs and add in the chopped garlic and onion when the tomato chunks start to soften. Stir.

Sorry for the blurry pic :P

4. Leave the tomatoes to bubble a bit and partly melt into the oil which won't be long. You still want some chunks left.

5.  Add in the sugar and season with black pepper and salt to taste. Give a good stir, and sprinkle a bit more dried herbs and turn off the heat. It's ready for plating. *You could also substitute the black pepper with a whole red chili (slit) for more heat, but add it earlier in the cooking process.

Use the whole stick of baguette for this amount of topping and you'll turn 2 very hungry people into 2 very happy people hahaa :D

Happy cooking! 

PS: Once I had this dish with garlic and herb roasted potato; I will post the recipe soon ^^

PPS: I might add in some vinegar too in the future to see if it adds another dimension to the taste.