So this is not Christmas, but I hope you have fun!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 2,5 € pp)
- salt
- 400 g stale bread crumbs
- 4 onions
- 40 cherry tomatoes
- a bunch of parsley
- pepperoncino flakes
- EV olive oil
- 4 tiny romanescos or 4 romanesco edges
– I thought, this was a Christmas tree!
– Actually, this dish has a Christmas look, but it has nothing to do with Christmas. By the way, do you like Christmas?
– Not at all, I find it sad.
– Are you stupid my friend? Christmas is something unique in life. I already miss it. It is not only the symbolism, the birth of Jesus, the most legendary rebel soul in history, but also the whole concept. I love everything about Christmas. The Carols and especially the “Carol of the Bells”, the food, the atmosphere, but, OK, I have to stop, this is not a Christmas dish, as we already said. Let´s go to our dish.
I really love bread crumbs. It is my first option, when I am too hungry, as in my home there is always some bread. Stale bread is preferred for this preparation, as the internal humidity is equally distributed, something that means that we can cut and cook the bread better. But don’t worry, even with same day bread we can also prepare the dish. We just have to discard the crust of the bread and cut it in pieces. Today we will cut uneven cubes with the knife. We drizzle with some oil and we set aside.
We cut the onion in thick slices and we boil it till tender. I remind you that by boiling the onions, we remove their caustic substances (we have to do this elaboration when the amount of onion is elevated) and we also turn them soft. When ready, we strain it and we set aside.
We cut the cherry tomatoes in quarters and we lightly salt them to enhance their aromas. We leave them aside for a quarter.
The “spark” for this dish was given by some fantastic tiny romanescos, I found at the organic market of Athens. Look how marvelous they are. But don´t worry, you can prepare this dish even with normal romanescos.
We cut four edges of romanesco broccoli, we even their bottoms and we boil them for about 6 minutes, one or two at a time, in very hot and salted water.
We preheat the oven to 220 Celsius degrees. We put onions, cherry tomatoes, oil and salt in a baking pan, we stir and we bake for about 15 mins. Five minutes before ending, we add the stale bread and the romanesco edges.
We put the stale bread with the rest on the plates, we add a piece of romanesco in the middle, we garnish with some pepperoncino flakes and some chopped parsley (and maybe with some more oil) and we serve.
