Well, they both start with "I".

Sometimes, you have an idea, and you just don't know where in the hell it even came from. I'm sitting here, immersed in a marathon viewing session of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. My simple breakfast of yesterday's soda bread toasted with butter, cheese, and apple, finally having digested enough to make me again crave food, and the idea hits me: bruschetta.

And I mean for real this time, not cheap toast with Johnny's garlic spread, but done the proper way, toasted under a broiler, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil, with a single twist, in that I'm fairly certain soda bread is not really a traditional bread for this dish.

But why not? Soda bread apparently has a reputation for toasting well, and my breakfast this morning had proved that rather effectively. Why not jazz up some simple toast with an Italian flair? I'm generally reticent about all this "fusion" nonsense that's all the rage at the yuppie troughs, but sometimes this sort of cross-cultural pairing just works, it seems, in fact, so natural that it could easily have been thought of centuries ago if only their respective cultures had been closer neighbors.

So, I decide, bruschetta it is. My mind then begins wandering to a relish, and I find in the fridge a small cup of sliced pickled banana peppers, leftovers of a stop at a Quizno's on the way home from a visit to the hairdresser's with my family. I chop those up, toss them with a quarter onion, about a half teaspoon of chili garlic paste, a few cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika. The whole mixture then goes into a frypan with some olive oil while the broiler heats up to toast the bread. After it's been cooking a while, I add a splash of the vinegar from a jar of pepperoncinis and cook just a bit longer, before setting aside.

The toast goes in the broiler on low heat, and after a good crisping, I rub it down with the fresh garlic and drizzle a little olive oil across it, before topping with the pepper relish and a little fresh grated parmesan cheese.

The result is fantastic. Rather than being overly spicy, instead, the sauteeing has brought out some of the sweetness locked away in the peppers and onion and garlic, and there's a subtle, multi-toned flavor to the mix that is absolutely perfect. At one point, I even catch a rather surprising hint of something like apple, so faint and out of place I am tempted to dismiss it as perhaps just my nose pulling back the smells from this morning's breakfast.

The bread itself is, indeed, wonderful when toasted just right, in fact, it seems to have toasted better in the broiler than it did in the toaster when I made my breakfast this morning. It's got just the right crunch, without being overly hard or difficult to chew.

I'm now wishing I had more already, merely an hour after my meal, but alas, I have no more of the peppers. I think perhaps I might still try a similar recipe with some pepperoncinis at some a future date, and this will certainly become a favorite treat in the future every time mother sneaks another cup or two of peppers out of the sub shop . . .