Quick and easy meze or appetizers: Bread rusks with tomatoes, olive oil and capers

I have been trying out some Greek recipes lately, mostly from two Greek cookbooks I own: Modern Greek by Andy Harris, and The Book of Greek Cooking (Icelandic translation) by Lesley Mackley. Meze are Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean small dishes or appetizers, much like the Spanish tapas or the Chinese dim sum.

Here is a meze from Modern Greek that I tried recently and loved. I did find it to be rather a lot of work to peel and deseed the tomatoes, so I didn't, but feel free to follow the exact recipe. My alterations are in the brackets. It is clearly a relative of the Italian bruschetta:

To serve 4 to 6 persons:

12 paximadia (dried bread rusks - I used lightly toasted slices of baguette)
5 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped (I used fresh, perfectly ripe (completely red and slightly soft) sweet summer tomatoes and neither peeled nor seeded them the second time I made this, and it was just as good. However, it was a bit little wetter that way, so if this is going to stand for a while before you serve it, you'd better follow the original instructions and peel and deseed)
12 caperberries, rinsed (may be left out, especially if the tomatoes are perfectly ripe and sweet)
2 tbs olive oil (must be good quality oil, and make sure it's not rancid - yep, this happened to me the first time around, but fortunately I discovered it before I had ruined all the slices)
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Arrange the rusks/toast on a serving platter and top with the chopped tomatoes. Put 2-3 caperberries on top of each, drizzle with olive oil and season with the salt and pepper.

Sample recipe from The Cooking of the Middle-East: Dolmates Yemistes me Rizi (baked tomatoes stuffed with rice)

This looks like a great starter:

1/2 pint (285 ml) water
3.5 oz. (100g) uncooked rice (long or medium grain)
6 firm ripe tomatoes, each about 3 inches (7,5 cm) in diameter
1 1/2 tsp salt
5 tbs olive oil
2 oz. (55 g) finely chopped onions
3 x 2 1/4 oz. (ca. 65 g) cans tomato purée (6.75 oz. or 190 g or 9 tbs)
6 tbs finely chopped parsley, preferably flat-leaf
5 tbs finely cut fresh mint or 2 1/2 tsp dried
1 1/2 tsp finely chopped garlic
1/4 tsp oregano, crumbled (how much is that in fresh?)
Freshly ground black pepper

Bring 3/8 pint (about 210 ml) to the boil in a small saucepan over high heat. Add the rice, stir a couple of times and cook the rice for about 8 minutes, or until softened but still firm (i.e. not fully quite cooked). Drain and set aside.

Cut a 1/4 inch (1/5 cm) slices off the stem end of the tomatoes and set aside. Hollow out the tomatoes, remove the inner pulp and discard the seeds. Chop the pulp and set aside. Sprinkle the tomatoes with 1 scant tsp of salt and drain them, upside down, on kitchen paper.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). while it is heating, make the stuffing: heat the oil in a large frying pan over moderate heat and cook the onions for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until they are soft and transparent but not brown. Add the rice, tomato pulp, 6 tbs of the tomato purée, the parsley, mint, garlic, oregano, the remaining salt and a few grindings of pepper. Stir fry until the mixture is almost dry (the mixture holds its shape almost solidly in the spoon).

Arrange the tomatoes, hollow side up, in a baking dish. Fill with the stuffing, packing it in firmly and put the reserved slices on top. Mix together the remaining 3 tbs of tomato purée and 3 tbs of water and pour around the tomatoes. Bake uncovered in the of the oven for 20 minutes, basting once or twice. Cool and serve directly from the baking dish.