South Shore Living / Delish / June 2011 / Antipasto Perfect

Jun 24, 201108:42 AM

Exploring the South Shore one bite at a time

Antipasto Perfect

It’s summer; if you want to call the cool, damp weather we’ve had lately that. The plant catalogs are piling up on the coffee table. In the grocery store, stalks of almost-affordable asparagus herald the arrival of early crops. At the gourmet food/cheese shop where I work, we spend hours shelling fresh peas; imported from California—it’s too early to reap that delicacy from New England soil of course, yet the plump green pods are redolent of new beginnings. Come August, we’ll be salivating over fresh tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash and peppers, but for now, that’s all a dream.

There is a way though, to make this delay more, well, palatable. Take the tired veggies offered on the grocery store shelves now, toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper and slide them into the oven. Roasting vegetables intensifies the taste, bestowing a luxurious depth of flavor to things like cardboard hothouse tomatoes or wilted green beans. Once your veggies are tender, let them cool; then mix with artisanal meats, cheeses, fish, marinated vegetables and olives. Toss with red wine vinegar, garlic, a good quality olive oil and serve with a hunk of crusty bread for a luscious antipasto.

Recently my daughter and I visited relatives. Late one afternoon, an adult friend came to visit and a wine bottle came out. Sitting around my sister’s kitchen counter, conversation flowed and as a result, dinner did not. Here’s the other fun thing about an antipasto. When the teenaged children expressed a desire for supper, we pointed out the roasted peppers, zucchini, asparagus, sopressata and shrimp we’d cooked up earlier, and over the course of about 20 minutes, two teenaged girls assembled a platter fit for The Food Network.
In Italian, antipasto means before the meal. But if you play your cards right, when you throw two hungry adolescents together with a mix of prepared vegetables, the resulting antipasto platter will become the meal.

 

Liza Carens Salerno is a freelance business writer from the South Shore. She works part-time at a cheese shop and can’t decide which is more fun—working with food or writing about it. Liza blogs at www.middlepassages-lcs.blogspot.com.