Chicken & Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta Rounds

Chicken & Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta Rounds

• 4 slices Texas-style toast
• 4 Ramekins (or something else round and bakeable)
• 1 red pepper
• 1 large (or 2 small) chicken breasts (3/4 lb)
• hard goat (or other flavorful) cheese (1 c, finely grated)
• 4 thin slices of tomato
• 1/4 cup basalmic vinegar
• basil leaves (~8-12)
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp flour
• seasoning (salt, pepper)

Roast red pepper (cut in half, deseed/vein, put cut side down on foil on baking pan, cook an hour at 350-400 or until skin blackens, wrap up in it's foil, set aside for 5 minutes or until cool, peel & discard skin)
While the pepper is roasting, marinate the tomatos with the basalmic (I used a small ziplock) -- turn occasionally.
Cook up the chicken.
Chop up the red pepper & chicken and mix in a bowl with some seasoning (you may want to use some olive oil to help it out) until it starts to want to stick together.
Mix in the egg and flour
Use ramekin (or other round) to cut out circles from the toast.
Separate chicken & pepper mixture equally into the ramekins.
Bake the ramekins and toast until the toast is as crispy as desired (but not too soft).

Plate up the bruchetta: put down the toast, top with the chicken & pepper "patty", a slice of marinated tomato, and 1/4 of the cheese. Broil or torch until the cheese is brown, top with basil leaves and serve.

Cranberry Sangria Jam

Cranberry Sangria Jam

• 2 (12 or 16oz) bags of cranberries
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 oranges (zest & juice)
• 1-2 limes (zest & juice)
• Red wine (make sure it's something you'd drink!)
• 1 pouch liquid pectin (optional)

Put the cranberries in a colander, give them a quick rinse and pick out any bad ones or stems.
In a large pot, put the cleaned cranberries.  Zest and juice the fruit into a large measuring device, and add enough wine to make around 2 1/2 cups total liquid.  Dump it into the pot.
Boil for about 6-8 minutes until a lot of the cranberries pop and are soft.  At this point, I decided I wanted more "jam" less whole berry, so I used my stick blender.
I've also been told that the cranberries have a lot of natural pectin and would probably thicken up on their own, but since I added the fruit juice and I wanted it definitely "jam" like, I added a pouch of liquid pectin (Certo) at the end and boiled it for one more minute before putting into jars.

Makes enough to fill seven 1/2 pint jars.