Cheesy Garlic Crumble

Yes, you read that right. No, it has nothing to do with the Aussie candy bar called Violet Crumble. But I thought the name sounded cool when I came up with it so you're stuck with it!

What do you do when it's 10 minutes before your spaghetti dinner and you realize you have no french bread with which to make garlic bread -with cheese, of course? Simple! Come up with something using breadcrumbs, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, and cheese!

There's no measurements for this as I really did make it up as I went along, but I did take plenty of pics which really illustrate the process.

Garlic crumble

What you need:
some breadcrumbs
fresh basil leaves
garlic (I used the jarred stuff for this)
olive oil
cheese

The cheese I used was cheddar which down here is called Tasty. Cheddar is only called cheddar in Oz if it comes from the Cheddar Gorge which is just outside of Cheddar.


What you do:

First, you'll need to find out the amount of bread crumbs you need. Use whatever oven-proof saucepan you need for making this and cover the bottom with 1 cm of breadcrumbs.



Then chuck that in a mixing bowl. See? Easy way to measure, isn't it?

Go outside and snip some fresh basil, then chop it up. How much basil? About this much:




Now add a good sized splat of garlic. How much is a splat? This much:




Put some fennel seeds in the palm of your hand. Run the thumb of the other hand over the seeds to partially crunch them, then add to the bowl. Here's what I mean:


Mix it all together and then add some olive oil. Like my olive oil can? It's from India.




Stir it all together then add some grated cheese. I used around 1 cup's worth of cheddar (tasty).




Mix it together using your fingers. Make sure you don't let the grate cheese clump together. Your bowl should now look something like this:




Add a bit of olive oil to whatever ovenable frypan you'll be using:
This is my small Gabrial Gate (tm) small frypan from a set of two. The ONLY reason I have the set is that I got them on an 80% off sale at Harris Scarfe. Otherwise there wouldn't have been no way I could afford those two wonderful frypans.

Now spread the mixture evenly over the bottom of the saucepan and cook on low heat on the stovetop till the bottom crumbs JUST start to brown. Do NOT leave the frypan unattended for any length of time as it can go from slightly browned to BURNT in the blink of an eye.

This was actually the second batch I made as I did turn my back on the first batch. Oops.

Now that the bottom is browned, it should look something like this:




Grate some more cheese over the top:




And then bake it in a hot oven till the cheese melts (only a few minutes). Slid it onto a cutting board




and then cut it up into pieces, serve on the side of your spaghetti in place of garlic bread.

Tada! Garlic Crumble!

Here's a closeup




Mmmmm, it was tasty.