Mom, what's for dinner?

I have discovered the wonder and joy of bruschetta. 

It has taken me 40-some years, but here I am, and I am loving it!  So is hubby, since he's been unable to eat fresh veggies for nearly 4 years!!  So I decided to make some bruschetta, but I realized I wanted a little more in my meal today, so I created my own version of a hearty bruschetta and I'm sharing it with you here!

Hearty Lemon Bruschetta with Chicken and Humuus

This recipe will easily serve 4, or 6-8 as an appetizer.

Preheat your oven to 350. 

Start with 3 med. roma tomatoes that are nice and fresh, but not too soft.  Now for you foodies out there, you're probably saying something like "Romas??  Is she KIDDING???"  But I'm not; just do it and you'll see why later.  Chop those in a 1/4 dice and set aside in a medium bowl.  Then, grab 2 small or 1 medium luscious, juicy tomatoes of your choosing.  I like Campari tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes, but truthfully, at this time of year, just add what you've got.

Next, take some cooked chicken breast and roughly chop.  I used the breast meat from a rotisserie chicken I had in the 'fridge.  (then I dumped the rest of the chicken into a pot of water and made Chicken Tortilla Soup, but that's a post for a different day!)

Place the chopped chicken into a seperate bowl, and set aside to be added later.

Gather your fresh basil and fresh parsley.  Remove the leaves from the stems, discard the stems, loosely stack the leaves and start chopping.  I usually use about 1/3 cup chopped herbs and I chop them pretty fine.  You can use as much or as little as you like.  Toss those on top of the tomatoes.

My basil happened to look like this when I opened up the package today.  Yikes!!  I managed to salvage enough unblimished leaves to make this meal, however, if you know of a better way to store basil, please let me know.  Obviously, I am either not using it fast enough or not storing it right.  This was purchased one week ago. 

But my parsley....well....it looked GORGEOUS!!

See that sweet little helper in the background?  That's my little one.  She was very upset that momma wouldn't let her sample, but she sure was cute anyway!

Back to parsley; this is an herb that I do know how to store properly, as you can tell by the above photos. 

To store herbs like cilantro and parsley properly, when you get home from the store you need to chop off the bottom 1-2 inches of the bunch of herbs.  Snip off the rubberband, and stick the herbs into a cup.  Add about 2 inches of water to the cup, then loosely set a produce bag over the herbs.  Like so:

Store the herbs in the bottom front (one of the warmer places) of your 'fridge.  Your herbs will stay fresh and crisp for quite some time.  This is also a great way to store carrot sticks, celery sticks, asparagras, cucumber spears, jicama sticks....I'm sure you can add more. 

Now, back to dinner!

 **Isn't this bowl amazing?  My mom made it for me and I love it!!  Yeah, Mom!!**

Slice the root end from one clove of garlic.  Slip the skin off, and set aside.

Grab your good EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil), some salt and your pepper grinder, because it's almost time to start mixing!

Toss a good pinch of salt into the bowl, then pour in the EVOO.  I use less than 1/4 cup or so.  I don't like it greasy, and I don't like to be overwhelmed by the taste of the oil.  If you're unsure, just taste as you go and add more.  It's a forgiving recipe!

Now here is where the fun starts.  My Mr. Man is not fond of balsamic vinegar, the traditinal element in bruschetta, but I needed some acid to go in the mix.  I love the idea of using lemon with tomatoes & basil, so why not in here?  Grab 1/2 of a small to med. lemon, and SQUEEZE!!

Don't worry if you get a seed or two, just pop them out.  No problem! 

Grab your black pepper grinder and give it few twists into the bowl, too.

Toss in the reserved chicken and mix it all together. 

Now, isn't that devine???? 

(I added a couple slices of provolone that I chopped up, hoping it would motivate the kids to try it.  It didn't work, and the cheese was too mild to add all that much flavor, to be honest.  I wouldn't suggest it.)

Moving on.  I am a big fan of using what you have on hand, and today, what I had was bagels.  Wheat and plain bagels, to be specific.  Bagels are not known for being very absorbant, hence the need for the roma tomatoes.  Romas don't have a lot of juice, so they work great with a bread like this.  Aaahhhh.....see???  It's all coming together.  Of course if you had a great hearty country loaf, or a ciabatta, you could use more juicy tomatoes.  As I said before this recipe is easy to adapt to what you have, and how you like it.

Prepare your bread by slicing it into pieces that are about 3/4-1 inch thick and 3-4 inches long.  I cliced the bagels in half, then cut them in half again, so each bagel made 4 pieces. Toast in the oven until slightly crisp and golden brown.  **You could do this before preparing the bruschetta**  Remove the bread from the oven and carefully rub the garlic clove over one side of the bread slices.

Now by itself, this would be a great meal.  But it wasn't quite enough for me.  I wanted layers of flavor, and I wanted flavors that compliment, reinforce and do not dominate one another.  I needed one more element, and that was the hummus.  I love the Sabra brand of hummus, but you can make your own or use whatever brand you like. 

Spread a generous amout of hummus on each piece of bread & arrange on your serving platter or individual plates.

Spoon topping over slices of bread, and serve!

Please let me know if you try this or make your own adaptation to the recipe.  I am envisioning making this using fresh tuna or shrimp instead of chicken, or switching the basil with cilantro and lime instead of lemon.  The possibilities leave me happy!!

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