Bruschetta Night!

Bruschetta with Grilled Eggplant, Rosemary, and Feta; Bruschetta with Black Olive, Pesto, Ricotta, and Basil; Bruschetta with Grape Tomatoes, Arugula Pesto, and Goat Cheese; and Bruschetta with Artichoke Hearts and Parmesan

Total time: 1.5 hours, with Sean at the grill while I prepped toppings inside

Source: Master of the Grill for eggplant and bread, The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook for other toppings

Servings: 6+

I was really worried that bruschetta night was going to backfire terribly because bruschetta is an appetizer, not a meal. But we totally made it work. We cut up two loaves of bread and grilled them and then made four different sets of toppings. I was originally going to cut each of the recipes in half (hence the two loaves of bread), but as I was making them it was generally easier to just do the full recipe, in part because you need enough stuff in the food processor for it to run effectively. I cut the amount of tomatoes in half because that was the first thing I did (they needed to drain for 30 minutes), but otherwise everything was the full recipe. I have no idea how to address serving sizes because we all just assembled the bruschetta as we went, so we didn’t always match the proportions for the toppings within a recipe and we had weird amounts left over. But 5 of us were fed enough to be satisfied and there was a decent amount of food left over.

Regarding prep, it was all pretty easy. The eggplant, cheese, and basil were really the only things that needed to be prepped instead of just thrown in a food processor. The pestos got moved to my immersion blender’s food processor after an initial processing because most of the contents just stuck to the bottom in my regular-sized one, but each component was pretty quick and easy. The only thing that really made it take an hour and a half was managing so many moving pieces.

The artichoke bruschetta was my favorite, but I knew that was going to happen, and the olive pesto was a close second, which was a surprise for me. The children were not super happy tonight, but the adults were fans of everything. So it goes.