Bruschetta with Homemade Ciabatta Bread

Hands up guys, who has ever made their own sour-dough bread?

If you haven't, you better give it a shot now......because let me tell you, making bread is not only Granny-business. It's hip.
Baking bread is totally in. All the cool kids do it now.

And look how pretty the result is:

And it tasted awesome too!!!

See, you can only win by giving this bread experiment a go.

I'm not going to lie...bread is pretty amazing by itself. Ideally fresh out of the oven with a bit chunk of butter.
But you can totally make bread fancy-panty by loading it with a couple of delicious and simple ingredients and call it 'bruschetta'.

Look how I dressed my bread up:

Starring in this multi-flavour-sextett are

- Roast pepper, onion and bacon bruschetta

- Zucchini spread bruschetta (adapted from Barafras Kochloeffel)

- Classic tomato and mozarella bruschetta

- Spinach pesto and parmesan bruschetta

- Strawberry and goats cheese bruschetta (adapted from Shutterbean)

- Walnut spread bruschetta (adapted from Souvlaki for the soul)

...hard to pick a favourite!

So, now that I have done my very best to make your mouth water and to make you crave home-made bruschetta, I will not give you the recipe.

Here.

I am not giving you the recipe here, on this blog. Because the lovely people from wheretoeat.ie, a fantastic  website where you can check out and review restaurants, let me write a guest post in their blog section about my 'Last of the Summer Bruschetta'.

Please check it out here and if you're from Ireland, go have a look what wheretoeat.ie have to offer!!

Buon appetito :)

Zucchini Pasta...Without Pasta

I am not entirely sure what to call this dish....Is it a pasta? Is it a salad? Is it a 'whatever-I-found-in-the-fridge-and-threw-on-a-plate' dish?
I don't know.

What I do know is, that I want to eat this dish every day for the rest of my live!
Fact.

This reminds me of that episode of How I Met Your Mother when they are listening to "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers and Marshall is like "This is such a good song, I'll never ever get sick of it, ever!!!" and then after listening to it for a couple of hours non-stop they just want to die....
Yeah...

I don't think 'Death by Zucchini Overload' would make a good obituary, I better limit my consumption to once a week.....maybe.

Zucchini Pasta (makes 1 serving)
about 1 cup of julienned zucchini (apparently that's the fancy term for long thin strips, I just used a normal knife)
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of half a lemon
1 clove of garlic
chopped parlsey (or basil)
a dash of salt
2 tbsp crumbled goats cheese (or ricotta, or feta cheese)
2 tbsp chopped almonds (or walnuts, or pine nuts)

Mix the zucchini and the dressing together with a lot of love and either eat it raw or toss it in a hot frying pan for a minute.

Sprinkle with cheese and nuts.

And you're done!

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

My mum has a huge vegetable garden, like huuuuuuge...there's even a potato field. And come summer, she switches to a full-time job in zucchini harvesting. So. Many. Zucchini.

They were turned into zucchini cream soup, fried zucchini, stuffed zucchini, roasted zucchini, zucchini in all variations. But it seemed like there was no way of getting rid of all the zucchini and after a while even the neighbours were fed up with them.

That's how the zucchini stopped being savoury and began ending up in my mum's chocolate cake.
My sister and me didn't like to admit it because, you know, there's healthy stuff in it....ewww....but that cake was heavenly. Thank you mummy!

So this recipe is an attempt to recreate my mum's chocolate zucchini cake. I think she would be pleased with the result :)

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins (makes 6 muffins)
1/2 cup chopped zucchini
1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp oil
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Blend the chopped zucchini with 1 tablespoon of water as smooth as possible. Look for a sauce-like consistency.
Mix together the zucchini, egg, oil and sugar. Add the dry ingredients. Fold in the walnuts.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes at 175C.