Crostini with Toppings Recipe

Crostini with Toppings Recipe Beau MacMillan: For your main dish challenge, you are throwing an h’orderve party. Anne and I are going to demo a Crostini. It’s a common h’orderve used at events like this. Anne Burrell: Crostini is the Italian word for -- Female: Toast. Anne Burrell: Toast, very good! You can put what on top of toast? All: Anything. Anne Burrell: Right. Crostini are one of the easiest, sort of blank canvas who gives novice cooks. I'm going to go ahead and start to make my topping. I have some Tuscan white beans or Cannellini beans we call this. I have some prosciutto, this is an Italian ham. Its’ very salty so keep that in mind when we’re seasoning this, a little pinch of crushed red pepper just for a little bit of a zip, a clove of garlic and some chopped sage. So, we’re going to go ahead and turn this on. And while we’re doing that, we’re drizzling it with olive oil until it looks like a paste. Piece of cake, yeah? So, after it looks like a paste, I'm going to stop and do what? Female: taste it. Anne Burrell: All right, delish. Okay so this is ready. Beau MacMillan: I'm going to show you one that’s real simple, and it’s actually kind of like a pesto, okay. I'm starting off with some sun dried tomatoes. Like Anne’s prosciutto, they tend to be salty as well, okay. So you’ve got to be careful when you season this. I've also got some sunflower seeds, lots of parmesan cheese as well. I've got some basil here I'm going to throw into, and what I'm going to like to do is add a little bit of olive oil, of course in the beginning to help start that. Damn, I'm ready to go. Anne’s ready to go. Now, we’re going to build our crostinis for you, okay. Anne Burrell: Let's talk about how the bread should look. I could cut pieces of bread like that but a little round piece of bread. Not that beautiful! So, let's go ahead and we’ll just cut it on the bias or on the diagonal. We don’t want too thick but you also don’t want it too thin either, okay. You want something that when we toast it isn’t going to get rock hard. We want to be kind to our diners. Now, I'm going to grill these on both sides so we get a little bit of char happening, that nice char lovely, not burnt toast really, but we like that kind of smoky flavor that adds to what we’ve got going on here. And then -- oh, I smell burnt toast already. So, you look at all these. And then, when I pull these up, I'm going to take a garlic clove and I'm just going to -- say one, two on there and it’s amazing how much flavor that will impart. And then, we’re going to go ahead and top it. I'm just -- spooning it on a little bit. I'm making sure, though that I neatly covered the whole surface of my Crostini but it’s not falling off the sides and it’s easy for the diner to eat. And then, I save the couple pieces of my chopped sage, and I'm going to garnish at the top with. Beau MacMillan: Looks awesome! Anne Burrell: And, they taste awesome! Beau MacMillan: I've got a killer little sun dried tomato pesto going on over here. I'm going to hit some contrast up on mine, and I'm going to spread a little soft goat cheese. So, we’ve got out little crostinis with the goat cheese and pesto. We’ve got a little basil. We can just add a few of those on top, and you’ve got another variation of a beautiful Crostini that’s ready to rock and roll. Bon Appétit!