Guacamole bruschetta with baked cherry tomatoes

It’s interesting how siblings who grow up in the same household can come to like and dislike completely different things. There are obviously similarities but the reason for the differences baffles me sometimes. Tomatoes are my favourite food, I eat them raw, I eat them on toast, I eat them in salads, I eat them in just about anything and everything. My brother has hated tomatoes ever since he was little and has only just started to get used to them a little.

He absolutely loves carrots but I’ve hated them since I was little and have just come to learn to like them recently. We do however, both hate capsicums. I’m sure there’s many research articles out there about occurrences like this but I’m not sure if there has been any conclusions.

Since I love tomatoes so much, I always try to keep some fresh tomatoes on hand. It’s now well and truly into winter. The coldness means tomatoes are no longer a fruit of the season and prices in local markets have increased two fold or more and sometimes don’t even look very appetising. I did however, find a batch of fantastic cherry tomatoes at Costco recently. For $9.99 a kilo, it’s quite cheap for tomatoes of that quality. So no surprise, I’m been cooking up a storm with these juicy, sweet gems in the kitchen.

One of my favourite ways to eat them is to bake them in the oven with some salt and olive oil. When you pop them in your mouth and take a bite, the warm, sweet juices just fills your whole mouth with happiness.

I also love putting tomatoes in guacamole. WIth a touch of cumin and smoked paprika, the flavours of the tomatoes are further enhanced, avocados are also one of my favourite goods.

One morning, I thought to myself, since I love to eat tomatoes in these ways so much, why not put them together? And so I made guacamole bruschetta topped with baked cherry tomatoes. It was truly a wholesome and flavourful combination of ingredients that I could just keep eating and eating. I hope you enjoy the recipe as much I did!

Guacamole bruschetta with baked cherry tomatoes
Makes 24 portions

Ingredients

• 1 baguette
• 48 cherry tomatoes
• 8 medium tomatoes
• 5 medium avocados
• cream cheese spread (can be omitted)
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1.5 tsp chilli powder or Tobasco sauce (omit if don’t want to make it chilli)
• 0.5 tbsp smoked paprika
• finely chopped garlic or 2 tsp garlic powder
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• juice of 3 limes

Note: I didn’t have coriander or red onion on hand at the time but this would be a fantastic and authentic addition to the recipe to include roughly quarter or half a bunch of chopped coriander and 1 red onion.

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Place cherry tomatoes on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper. Place in the oven for roughly 10 minutes or until the skin on the tomatoes are starting to break.
3. In the mean time cut the baguette into 24 slices
4. Lightly toast the slices till light golden brown
5. Chop large tomatoes into small cubes
6. Chop coriander into roughly 3mm sizes and dig out the avocado flesh from the skin.
7. Put coriander, chopped tomatoes and avocado into a large bowl then add chopped garlic (or garlic powder), chilli powder, smoked paprika, lime juice, cumin and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil then mix together, careful not to bruise the avocado too much (my avocados were very ripe and slightly brown and mushy so it didn’t turn out as well as I wanted).
8. Spread bread slices with cream cheese, top with guacamole and serve with baked tomatoes.

I actually just ate the baked tomatoes by themselves and then ate the bruschetta because it was a little difficult and messy to bite but the flavour combination was of course fantastic. 🙂

If you feel that there are too much tomatoes for you in this recipe, you can make the guacamole without the tomatoes, although you will have to adjust the seasoning as well.

Question time: What’s your favourite food/ingredient and what do you hate? Do you also have a sibling who like or dislike the foods like you?