What I Made Last Week

On Friday last week, I threw a party for those of my friends who had not been able to attend my birthdy party four weeks ago.

I did not want it to be an exact repeat, and altogether make it a less formal affair with food that does not need to be eaten with cutlery, and so I decided to nick Pete's idea and make what he calls breadshots.

There is no recipe on his post, but I imagined it couldn't be too complicated, and simply made two bowls of pizza dough. You can find the recipe for my pizza dough here.

I bought black olives and a small bag of pine nuts and prepared the bruschetta mixture I got for Christmas:

Very practical - it comes as dry mixture in a small jar, and you simply stir one part bruschetta mixture with two parts of water and one part of olive oil, et voilà, you have a bruschetta spread that smells lovely, looks nice and tastes deliciously! (I have two more such jars, one is for alioli and the third one makes a nice herbs-and-spices dip which you can prepare with joghurt or sour cream.)

Shaping the pizza dough into small rolls wasn't difficult, but once I had done the first batch, I realized they were maybe going to be a bit on the large side, and made the second batch slightly smaller. Next time I'll make this, I'll roll even smaller "shots".

With the blunt end of a knife handle, I made deep dents into each breadshot and filled them with the bruschetta spread. (Of course, most people would use their thumbs for that, but my finger nails were a bit long pre-cutting.)

Then I put a black olive and/or some pine nuts in each dent. Since I don't like olives (I like olive oil, just am not keen on eating whole or sliced olives as such), I didn't put one in each breadshot. I think Pete said he used dried tomatos, pieces of chorizo and olives; the nice thing about such recipes is that you can vary and either use what you already have at home anyway, or what you like most yourself.

The two batches of breadshots then went into the oven for somewhere between 20 minutes and half an hour (I always need to check frequently with my oven) and came out like this:

The olives already were black to begin with, so they looked a bit burnt (they were not), but all but one of the breadshots were eaten (I think RJ alone had about three of four), and I had one myself, so I guess they were alright.

This was the first time I ever made this, but it won't be the last time, and they will improve with practise!