One sliced loaf either white or brown
Cornish smoked sea salt
| Prep Time: | 0:10 | |
| Cook Time: | 0:04 | |
| Serves: | 0 |
Prep to Cook: French cooks knife, serrated knife, chopping board
Prep: Turn on grill to pre-heat
Take a pile of bread slices
Using a serrated knife saw off the crusts
Lay the bread on the grill pan rack
Toast one side until evenly golden
Turn-over and lightly toast the other side
Quickly
Slice the bread in half inserting a sharp knife between the two toasted sides
Don’t worry if it removes a bit of soggy bread with it
Now cut the bread into two triangles
Place all the triangles uncooked sides uppermost.
Sprinkle with sea salt or flavoured sea salts
Grill again, fairly gently until the melba toast browns, crisps and curls
Cool and store in a polythene bag adding a little more sea salt.
To Serve:
Fill the curled side with meat pate such as chicken liver pate or potted shrimps
Or use alongside a wet dip such as salsa or cream cheese and chive dip
Salted Melba toast is a good way to feel good and save money. Use cheap sliced bread to produce some tantalising crispy and tasty Melba toasts. Cornish smoked sea salt adds delicious flavour so that hey- presto you have low fat, low calorie tasty snacks to eat or serve with soups and pate.
Either white or brown bread works well. I also tend to think the cheaper the bread the better these work so you can cut the corners a bit here.
Cooks Know How: Grilling or toasting is a hot method using direct heat on the bread. It causes a chemical change to take place that is irreversible. Not only does the starch brown it also forms dextrins that are sweeter and therefore the bread changes texture and flavour. The use of sliced bread helps the resulting melba toast to curl and be extremely thin and very crisp and dry. Using sea salt gives a wonderful savoury flavour and bite.
Investigate the range of flavoured sea salt such as onion, garlic or chilli. Then you can serve bowls of home-made melba toasts that double for low fat ‘crisps’ because they taste splendid yet cost very little. You may wonder, like I did, where Melba toast got its name. It is named after Dame Nellie Melba, the stage name of Australian opera singer Helen Porter Mitchell. The term is thought to date from 1897, when the singer was very ill and it became a staple of her diet. The toast was created for her by chef (and fan) Auguste Escoffier, who also created the Peach Melba dessert. The hotel proprietor César Ritz supposedly named it in a conversation with Escoffier.
