Cherry and peach bruschetta on brie crostini with port reduction sauce

Try to pour the port sauce more evenly than this

One may be tempted to skip the port reduction sauce. Trust me when I say that would be a mistake. It ties the recipe together and really takes it to another level.

For the crostini

• 1 baguette (one of the long, skinny ones or two shorter ones)
• 1 small wheel of brie

For the bruschetta

• 1 cup bing cherries, washed, pitted and diced
• 2 peaches, pitted and diced
• 1 tbsp port
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon sugar
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil

For port reduction sauce

• 2 cups ruby port
• 2 heaping tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp whole green peppercorns
• 4-5 fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 cinnamon stick

Preferably, the night before slice baguette in thin pieces and place on a cookie sheet in the oven to dry out. To make: Preheat oven to 350 and bake bread until toasty, flipping once. About 10 minutes. Pull out of the oven and let cool slightly. Toss ingredients for bruschetta and set aside. In the meantime,  top each slice of toast with a thin slice of brie and pop back in the oven just long enough to melt. Mix port and spices in a two-quart stock pan and set over low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Pull off heat and using a kitchen match light on fire. Let the flames burn out. Remove bread from oven and let cool slightly before topping each piece with a tablespoon or so of the bruschetta. Once the flames die out, return port to eye and turn heat up to medium, stirring often until thick. Timing is important here. You don’t want it to thicken before you’ve topped the bread. Once the sauce is reduced, pull the spices and discard. Immediately drizzle over the assembled crostini.

Notes: For cooking we use cheap port, which is quite sweet. If you’re using the good stuff… well the good stuff’s for drinking… but if you are using higher quality, consider increasing the sugar to your taste.