How To Present Traditional Italian Tomato Cheese Crustinis

"Well, the next step would be to take the bowl off the Cuisinart and take it over to the bowl you have the mozzarella in, and remove all of the cheese which is now slightly tinted green, from that fresh basil, which is really great and then our next step would be to put it on our baguette slices which are, are crustinis, I put it on fairly thick like this, mounding it and getting it absolutely to every inch of the baguette. And that’s pretty much how you do it. Just similarly, I’ve got a tiny baking sheet ready and when these are all finished, when you’ve done all of these, then we put on a slice of sun-dried tomato, across at an angle like that so that it looks really pretty. And I do them all the same, because you’ll see when we arrange it all on a platter that it will be beautiful. Now one thing that I did not say about sun-dried tomatoes, they generally come in a jar like this, it doesn’t have to be this brand. They come in oil, and what I generally do is put them in a sieve of some kind, I save the oil to use for another purpose because its got a wonderful flavor of sun-dried tomatoes, and when I take them out I slice them in half, because that’s really all you need for this hors d’oeuvre is half on top of each, like that. So I have a whole small bowl ready with all my little halves, I think I have twelve there, after that we put them in the oven for seven minutes, at 350. The tomato cheese crustinis have just come out of the oven, do you remember we baked them at 350 for five to seven minutes. So I would recommend setting a time and checking them after five minutes, because the way they are now, which is really nice and puffy and melted, they’re almost almost like little pizzas. Children like these, as well as adults and it really makes a beautiful presentation when you take just a little sprig of the fresh basil that you have left over from what you bought and arrange it on the platter, it looks very professional, and yeah, rustic and I have to tell you they are delicious, enjoy."