it’s a crostini summer

I have been really into making different types of crostinis for appetizers.  I figured nobody would get bored if I changed it up every weekend until Josh said, "crostinis again"?  Maybe I will have to shake it up. 

Here are a bunch of different takes over the past few weeks. The foundation for all of these are baquettes.  Slice the baquettes at an angle into thin pieces.  Lay them over a covered cookie sheet.  I used tin foil because I am out of parchment.  Take a brush and brush olive oil and both sides of the sliced pieces.  Bake at 400 until the breads becomes toast and really crispy.

I took three different types of kale that I got in my farm box and sauteed them with a little kosher salt and olive oil.  The base for keeping the kale on is marscapone.  I am not a big fan of marscapone for this but they were out of whipped ricotta at the store.  Alas, I forgot to take a pic.

Here I took ricotta and added honey and lemon juice, whipped it up.  Spread the ricotta mixture on the toasts and put sliced figs over that top. The fava beans are so good right now.  I made up a batch of fava beans quickly pan fried with some olive oil and kosher salt.  Put those on the toasts and thin slices of Pecorino.  The salty cheese with the fava beans works nice.

I got a bunch of zucchini from the CSA this week.  I chopped them all up and sauteed until crispy.  The pan I had did not work well but it was all I have.  It got mushy which is fine.  I put that on the toasts and then shaved Manchego cheese and crumbled over the top.

I used ricotta again, just with some lemon this time and took the Green Pickle Relish from Ricks Picks and spread it over the top.  Yum.

None of these are too difficult.  You can add fresh herbs, you can add anything you want, some pine nuts would be a good addition to the kale but it is a simple delicious way to keep the troops at bay until dinner comes along.