This recipe was inspired by an episode of It's Alive from the Bon Appetit test kitchen. I had the show on in the background while I was doing some work and while I paid little attention to Brad's actual instructions I became obsessed with the idea of having crusty bread with tomatoes and ricotta and came up with this variation.
* I rewatched his episode after making my variation and our technique is pretty wildly different 😂 He uses smaller tomatoes, cooks them to just warmed though and uses whole cloves of garlic and chilis in his recipe. I am still happy with my variation :)
Ingredients
- Crusty Bread (I used one from the Half Baked Harvest "Super Simple" Cookbook but this bread on her website would work as well
- Tomatoes (I had 5 or 6 Campari tomatoes on hand)
- Olive Oil
- Minced Garlic
- Fresh Basil
Instructions
- With a large splash of olive oil in a skillet, add the garlic and, quickly after, quartered tomatoes.
- Add a small bunch of fresh basil and cook on medium-low until the tomatoes have released juice and the olive oil, garlic and tomato juices have made a thick syrup. Maybe 5-10ish minutes?
- Take 2 thick slices of the bread and stick them directly into the skillet to soak up juices. Broil these pieces of bread until the bread is brown and toasty around the edges. Keep a close eye, it does not take long!
- After removing the toast from the oven, top with a generous layer of ricotta cheese and spoon the tomatoes and juices over top.
- Top with a drizzle of olive oil, salt & pepper and additional fresh basil.