Garlicky kick jazzes up appetizer

Sturdy crostini starring creamy cheese spread can be made in advance

Babies and even toddlers have naturally sweet smelling breath. Baby's breath, as it were.

When older daughter Claire was not quite 2, we were having dinner at the wonderful Blueberry Hill in St. Louis one evening. Marion's salad arrived, festooned with a heap of raw red onion, which immediately captivated young Claire. She insisted on eating all of it.

Carrying her as we left the restaurant later, I noticed her breath was an amusing mix of baby's breath and ONIONNNN!

In a way, that describes the taste of these luscious crostini. Goat cheese has a nice, mild, non-assertive flavor, and the green garlic -- even used raw, as it is here -- offers a much milder version of mature garlic's big flavor. (Green garlic is is similar to scallions and leeks in appearance; the entire plant is edible.)

The end result is a crunchy, satisfyingly savory appetizer that melds the creamy richness of the cheese with a mild garlicky kick.

Crostini is Italian for little toasts -- and for cooks pretty much everywhere, it means a blank canvas for inventing delicious appetizers.

The idea is wonderfully straightforward: Brush bread slices with a little olive oil and then toast them in the oven, under the broiler, on the grill or, as I did here, in a grill pan. You can flavor the bread with garlic-infused oil or not.

Then you top it with any manner of delicious concoctions. This recipe is loosely based on one by Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, published a few years ago in New York magazine.

Terry Boyd is the author of the Chicago-based Blue Kitchen blog, www.blue-kitchen.com, where this first appeared.