Roasted Tomato Mushroom Bruschetta

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m feeling rather antsy as I putter around the house by myself.  My husband went on a bike ride as he has been feeling antsy in his own way as well.  I’m alone, I’m bored, and I’m hungry.  Some of the best (and worst) things have come out of my kitchen when I’m in a mood such as this.  I hate to say it, but being alone tends to contribute as well.  My husband hates fresh tomatoes *gasp, shock outrage* and I adore tomatoes in almost every form.  When I was little, I was famous for eating them green off the plant and not getting sick.

Tonight I decided to try something similar to something I had seen out of the corner of my eye on some random cooking show.  Random, isn’t it?

I decided to make roasted bruschetta.  I first took mushrooms and chopped them somewhere between fine and sliced.  To this, I added sliced tomatoes, and then sliced garlic cloves.  Now the garlic was sliced so that it wouldn’t burn such as smaller pieces would.  I then covered them with salt and pepper and drizzled with olive oil.  I moved them around a bit to make sure they were evenly coated.

My oven has this lovely convection roasting setting, so I popped that on and cooked them at 10 minute intervals, as I was unsure of timing.  Ended up being about 35 minutes in the oven. Everything came out looking scrumptious, now I just needed some bread!

I had some leftover dinner rolls from a previous post- I sliced them in half and treated them with a recent purchase from a vineyard store in San Diego: Garlic Olive oil. 

This is very much one of my favorite cooking oils.  I brushed this over the bread and broiled it for about 2 minutes (watch this carefully two minutes is near burnt (I like mine crunchy).  Towards the end, I sprinkled each slice with about ½ teaspoon shredded parmesan because, seriously, you gotta have cheese.

While I was doing this, the tomatoes had a chance to cool.  I them dumped them on my über chopping board and sliced them into chunks.  I then poured this into a serving bowl along with the drippings from the bowl- (garlic essence anyone?) I then went to my garden and grabbed some herbs I thought would add some good flavor.  I favor Italian Parsley for things such as this, and for some reason, I grabbed a stalk from my lemon grass.

Both were chopped and mixed with the tomato mixture.  Bread came out of the oven and I arranged the slices on a platter around the tomato mixture after they had a chance to cool.  I ended up eating this with a modified Shirley Temple (meaning there was a tiny bit of Whipped Cream Vodka in it) and my husband found me by following the moans as I was eating in my office when he got home.

So scrumdiddlyumptious!