Picture this: slices of bread, covered with a thick meat sauce, topped with cheese, breaded and fried. Imagine eating one of these treats… with the slightly melted cheese stretching out into the rich sauce and the crunchy slice of fried bread. Is your mouth watering already? These are crostini and I made them as a part of the Sicilian Street Food New Year’s Eve Party I organised for this month’s Foodbuzz 24×24 event. As they require the same cheese as Spiedini, I usually make both dishes together. Enjoy!
For the meat sauce filling – recipe adapted from Ricette di Sicilia
Ingredients:
200 gms – 7 oz. beef mince
200 gms – 7 oz. pork mince
1 onion, diced
100 gms – 3.5 oz. tomato concentrate
50 gms – 1.75 oz. Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated
2 bay leaves
2 cloves
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
½ glass white wine
Salt and Pepper
Put the diced onion and extra virgin olive oil in a pot and sauté it until soft (1). Add the beef and pork mince and brown well, breaking all the lumps with a wooden spoon (2). Add the white wine and let the alcohol evaporate (3). Add the salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, tomato concentrate and ½ glass of water (4). Cook it for 30 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. Add the finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano (5) and set aside to cool down (6).
For assembling crostini
Ingredients:
1 big loaf of stale bread, sliced into 1 cm – ½ inch thick slices*
Primosale cheese, sliced into 0.5 cm – ¼ inch thick slices
Meat sauce
Egg whites, lightly beaten
Flour and breadcrumbs, mixed in equal proportions
Salt
*this bread has to be compact, with no holes inside. It has to be bought and kept to dry a couple of days before making crostini.
Start by slicing the cheese. Then slice bread and cut it out in the same shape as the cheese, this will make it easier to crumb coat them.
Spread a heaped tablespoon of meat sauce on top of the slice of bread and top it up with the slice of cheese. Do this for all the slices of bread and cheese.
Dip them in the lightly beaten egg whites and coat well with the flour and breadcrumb mix.
Shallow fry them in hot vegetable oil. Fry them cheese side down first, to avoid the cheese from melting completely. Serve hot.
Mmmm, these came out looking perfect! I’d love to try one for the crunch 🙂
Ah-mazing!!! I could eat these for breakfast, lunch and supper.
This looks incredibly rich, I’m afraid I wouldn’t last ’till midnight if I was at your party; so much incredible food, I would have to try everything. And then maybe even seconds. What a great series of posts, Manu.
I love crostini, and this variety sounds delicious!
Manu, the Crostini looks delicious, I never saw it before, in fact I have in mind crostini as a kind of toast with garlic and tomato.
Happy 2012 Manu. Hope you have had a wonderful start of the year. I see that I have missed a couple of your wonderful recipes. These crostinis look so yummy. I would love to have some now.:-)
Truth Yumminess!:)) Love the recipe and delicious photos!!!
Oh man… You didn’t. I bet this was SO amazing!
I dont think it gets much better than this!!
Too bad you live down under … Your crostini bring new meaning to our collective visualization of what crostini are… I will bet that a cart parked on a NYC street would make the local news after just a few days of surprising patrons..
Happy New Year and please keep up the great postings
Oh, mine! These look delicious! O__o
This is completely new to me! How wonderful, I must try it. Frying the cheese looks really tricky though.
I always say you shouldn’t throw out stale bread! and look at what delicious things you can do with it!