blue cheese pear and scotch walnut bruschetta
so here’s my “recipe” / tentative guidelines for the AMAAAAAZING bruschetta i cranked out the other night.
i used a french baguette and sliced it diagonally into about 1/2″ thick slices, but it could even have been a little thinner, maybe 1/4″.
next, i sliced some pears thinly, maybe a little less thickly than the bread. i used some amazing pears recommended to me by the produce guy at Berkeley Bowl (the one who said that we move “SOOO FAST”) that i believe were called 20th century apple pears. but i’m sure that any pears would do.
C and i LOOOOVE her cuisinart, and use it constantly, so i threw about a handful of walnuts into the sucker and chopped ‘em finely (thicker than coffee grounds for a french press, but not too much thicker) and then removed them to a bowl.
next into the cuisinart went the topping for the bruschetta. i threw in about a 2″ square of blue cheese, about 3/4 of a stick of butter, about a tablespoon of brown sugar, and drizzled maybe a shot or two of some scotch we happened to have lying around. i’m sure whiskey would work fine too, and spiced rum might even be good… hm… ideas. i blended all of the above until it reached a fairly goopy mess, adding a bit more brown sugar to taste, a few pinches of salt, and a tiny bit more scotch to lube up the whole process.
next: assembly! on a cookie sheet or any kind of oven-suitable pan, place the bread slices. atop that, the pear slices, and atop that, a healthy dollop (rounded tablespoon? depending on the size of your bread. you don’t want too much of the topping to ooze down the sides and burn on the pan) of the blue cheese mixture. a sprinkle of walnuts, and into the oven!
i don’t remember what C had the oven on for the gnocchi she was baking, but it was somewhere around 400 degrees, and i just threw the bruschetta in there with them for about 13 minutes. if i remember correctly, the gnocchi were done at about 8 minutes, and we turned the oven off and let the bruschetta sit in the heat for another 5 or so. just keep an eye and a nose on them, and you should be able to tell when they’re done.
and enjoy! the combination of flavors may sound bizarre, but the end result was unbeliiiieeevably good.
over and out, til next time!
