Goat’s cheese and chargrilled vegetable bruschetta.

Goat’s cheese and strawberries is one of my new favourite flavour combinations. On holiday, one of the best meals I had was a goat’s cheese salad with strawberries and walnuts. I got the ingredients when I got home to recreate the salad, but instead decided to make something with vegetables and some lovely sourdough bread. I made this dish for lunch, but it was very filing and would be more than enough for an evening meal. I don’t cook enough meat-free meals and it’s something I want to do more, especially as many people have different dietary needs now, so it’s always good to practice them! I pickled the red onion to give the dish some sharpness and it worked really well with the sweet strawberries and honey on the cheese.Prep time: 10 minutes.Cooking time: 20 minutes.Ingredients (for two people):

• 200g goat’s cheese sliced.
• 1/2 large courgette, thinly sliced.
• 1 beef tomato sliced.
• 1 yellow pepper sliced.
• 10 strawberries sliced.
• 50g chestnut mushrooms sliced.
• 1/2 red onion sliced.
• Cider vinegar.
• Handful of fresh basil leaves.
• Honey to drizzle over the cheese.
• Balsamic vinegar to drizzle over the vegetables.
• 2 slices of sourdough bread per person.
• Garlic olive oil.
• Salt and pepper.

Method:

1. Firstly, cover the sliced red onion with the cider vinegar. Have enough vinegar to cover all of the onion and set to one side.
2. Pre-heat your grill to the highest setting for the cheese.
3. Heat up the garlic oil in a griddle pan. I think the vegetables look better when they are cooked in a griddle pan as they get more colour and cook evenly.
4. Cook the courgette and pepper first. You need the pan to be quite hot as the vegetables need to be chargrilled, but you want them to be al dente. Cook for roughly 5 minutes, then set aside to be kept warm.
5. Cook the tomatoes, mushrooms and half of the strawberries next. Add more oil if the pan is becoming dry. Garlic oil adds more flavour to the vegetables, as does chargrilling them.
6. Once all the vegetables are cooked, set to one side and place the cheese on a baking tray. Drizzle with honey, but only a little as the cheese will lose it’s flavour.
7. In the same pan, cook off the sourdough bread so it becomes crispy.
8. The cheese only needs about 3 minutes under the grill, so I plated my bruschetta and vegetables up so I could serve as soon as the cheese was cooked. When you plate up the vegetables, put about 3 piece of each one on top of the bread and then layer the pickled red onion on top. Put the remaining fresh strawberries around the edge. Season with salt and pepper.    
9. Grill the cheese for 2-3 minutes. You want it warm, but not too hot that it completely melts and loses its structure.
10. Place on top of the vegetables when it is done, drizzle balsamic vinegar on the top and some fresh basil leaves.

Enjoy!

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