Speaker: Alright, let's get started with our Chocolate Crustini. Michael, this one is for you, and anybody else named Michael would want? What we are going to do is, we are going to take a loaf of baguette. We are going to slice almost half inch slices, nice thick slices ,and we are going to make Crustini, which is basically Italian croûtons. So we are going to soak these in little bit of olive oil, some nice fruity full flavored olive oil, and we are going to toast these in a skillet, not in the oven with the olive oil. Now why I am doing this in a pan and not in the oven? In the oven they might get too crunchy, crispy, I don't want them dried up.
I want just to brown each side almost like you're making a toasted cheese sandwich, and you know how it kind of gets crispy on the edges, but the middle still stays kind of moist. That's what we are doing here. So I just want to give them a couple of minutes on medium heat, just give them a little color on the insides and the middles, still little soft, the outside getting a little crunchy, a little crispy and then what we are going to do, is it is going to seem bizarre and disturbing, but you guys trust me, this is incredible combination.
Into those hot olive oil soaked crustini that just came out of the pan, you are going to push down a small jagged chunk of dark, dark chocolate. Now don't use milk chocolate for this, don't use semisweet, dark chocolate, bittersweet, and what's going to happen in about five minutes, is that chocolate is going to sort of ooze and melt into that hot crustini, and if not, just put them in a warmer for a minute. What is going to happen, we are going to top these already bizarre crustini, because we put chocolate on it, who the heck would do that. We are going to take sea salt and this is the best brand to use, I will talk about this on the site, Maldon, but any sea salt will work, but this sea salt is particularly perfect for this bizarre dish, because it's in really thin flakes, it's almost like shards of glass. And you just sprinkle a tiny amount, like literally three or four shards of that sea salt on each piece of chocolate, and when you bite into that, what you get is that fruity peppery olive oil, that bittersweet chocolate and that little crunch, that little salty crunch of the sea salt on top, it is hard to describe.
But I just did. I think it does a pretty good job. But anyway, you have to try to this. Now you are going to confuse your friends, this is an appetizer, I don't know, is it a desert? Could be. Is it just something you would pass around when you are drinking a good bottle of red wine? Sure. You know that bottle of Port, someone gave to you, like four years ago, dust that thing off, pour a couple of glass of Port and make these. They are good, very unusual, I admit it. I don't know who would have thought to put a chocolate on an olive oil laced crustini, but I saw this one time at a restaurant and I thought it was strange, and then I tried it at home. Incredible, alright, enjoy!
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