On days when I don’t feel like cooking and am too hungry to wait for a pizza delivery, I turn to a distant cousin of pizza: fancy toast.
Fancy toast is less about “fancy” ingredients and more about aesthetics. Simply top a thick slice of bread with just about anything in the fridge — cheese, avocado, leftover chicken salad — and take the time to embellish it with fresh herbs or flavored salt.
Need a little more inspiration? Take this ricotta and prosciutto toast recipe as an example. To liven up a tub of ricotta cheese, stir in the zest of a lemon and half of its juice, plus a good bit of salt and pepper. This gets smeared generously over a thick piece of sourdough bread that’s been drizzled with oil and toasted under the broiler. You can certainly use a toaster for this step, but if you’re feeding more than two people, the broiler will make it much quicker to prepare all of that bread.
Although toast with lemony ricotta is a pretty good dinner on its own, torn strips of prosciutto plus a smattering of chopped fresh tarragon really takes the toast into fancy territory. Slice it in half and serve with a quick mixed green salad if you’d like, or simply enjoy it on its own. Either way, you’ve got a deluxe dinner in less than 15 minutes.
Sign up for the AJC Food and Dining Newsletter
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on Twitter and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
