24th March 2024
By home cook Sharmini Jayawardena
This antipasto is a star from my Hors D’oeuvre selection that I’m embarked on, literally pulling out and sharing great appetizers from around the world. Let’s just say it’s a journey across the planet through appetizers.
These Italian antipasto skewers are to die for. I got to savouring entirely new flavor components in the process of creating and trying them out.
The ingredients are so unique it took me a while in this high end supermarket aisles to gather them. Starting with cherry tomatoes of which I found an organic variety that were truly yummy. Stuffed Manzanilla olives 🫒 with minced pimientos, from Spain; preserved whole artichoke hearts from Peru, (Btw, I found out the artichoke belong to the thistle family). So, they are flowers and they had a lovely floral note to them. Sun dried tomatoes 🍅 in oil, salt, garlic, herbs and chilies from Australia. Italian Salami Napoli. Basil leaves, some of which were straight from my garden and some sweet basil 🌿 leaves from the highlands. Cherry bocconcini which takes center stage in these skewers, hand made by me,
That’s quite a mouth watering mouthful, and here they are:
I can’t believe I’ve been waiting for over three years for just that right time to make these and it happened to be now !!!
I made 20 antipasto skewers.
So, how you make these is, you first give a good wash to the fresh ingredients like cherry tomatoes and basil leaves and set them aside to dry.
Now to make the cherry bocconcini, the prepared item of which was not available at the store.
After a deep dive search online it was revealed that you could actually make these from a mozzarella hunk. So I purchased this Australian mozzarella hunk, brought it back with me.
I proceeded to make the marinade for the cherry bocconcini by adding minced garlic, olive oil, chili flakes, finely chopped basil, thyme and rosemary leaves, some sweet chili sauce and sea salt, into a bowl and mixing it well.
Having created the mini cherry mozzarella balls by scooping out a teaspoonful of the mozzarella cheese and rolling them into balls in the palms of my hands, I dunked the cherry bocconcini in the marinade, and set it aside.
Here’s a small sample of the cherry bocconcini in the marinade:
Remove the salami slices as you go, from its pack, cut them in halves or quarters and fold them up into little squares.
Take out an adequate number of stuffed olives, sun dried tomatoes and preserved artichokes from their jars, cut the sun dried tomatoes into bite size pieces, break up the petals from the artichoke hearts. Set aside. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
To assemble these beauties:
Pick up a bamboo cocktail skewer and pass half a cherry tomato through it. Follow with a basil leaf. Followed by a marinated cherry bocconcini, a stuffed olive, folded salami, artichoke petals, piece of sun dried tomato, ending with another cherry tomato half. You can add more basil leaves if you prefer that.
So, this is basically it – Antipasto Italiano – Antipasto skewers, have it by themselves with drinks or as a great starter to a good Italian meal:
Here’s an image of the ingredients I used:
An antipasto skewer on a plate, extra virgin olive oil, artichoke hearts in a jar, a platter of the ingredients, stuffed olives, cherry bocconcini in the marinade and sun dried tomatoes.
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Presto!
