Engineer Food: Five Color Bruchetta

Today was hot. Not in the attractive or enjoyable way either. It was sticky and gross and my air conditioner was doing little to help the situation. It was so hot, in fact, that the thought of an open flame or hot oven in my kitchen was repulsive. I cannot stress this enough. I almost never make a meal with no actual cooking (mostly because I think fire is cool). It was gross.

Fortunately, it being summer (hence the whole heat thing), everything I needed to make a five color bruchetta was in season. For this, you will need four plum tomatoes, a medium onion, a green pepper, a yellow pepper and some olives (pitted, for the love of your fingers, don't try to chop olives with pits. Aggravation will ensue). Also, a loaf of baguette sliced into half inch slices.

Isn't it amazing how I magically have everything I need?

A note about picking vegetables for this recipe: you want an approximately even amount of each of the peppers, the tomatoes and the onion (the olives should be pungent enough that you will only need a quarter part of them). Remember a simple rule of thumb. Tomatoes are solid but not dense, so they will chop to about their apparent volume. Onions are solid and dense, so there will be more onion than you expect. Peppers are hollow, meaning there will be less than you think. Also, a short squat pepper will give you about the same amount of usable fruit as a taller skinnier one. Don't ask me how.

Now its time to dice away! Shoot for about quarter inch (half centimeter) pieces.

Hey look! There are five stripes of color!

Dump the vegetables into a waiting bowl. This is when I fall in love with my flexible cutting board all over again because it happens to act like a funnel, minimizing spillage.

Now it's time to season your veggies. I used (from left to right) olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder (not garlic salt; if you only have garlic salt then omit the regular salt) basil and balsamic vinegar.