April 3, 2016 | 0 Comments

Sunday Rewind: Gourmet Club: Soup/Salad – Antipasta and Mini Caprese Salad Bites

– Originally posted June 27, 2012.As The Rantings of an Amateur Chef has been going since February of 2012, there are quite a few readers that have joined along the way. In an effort to bring back some great recipes that they may have missed, I will dedicate Sundays to re-posting a favorite that is at least two years old. I hope you enjoy! – The Ranting Chef

As noted in yesterday’s post, this quarter’s Gourmet Club theme was Italian.

Three of the couples live within several miles of each other and the other couple, the host for this dinner, lives all the way across town. The three couples decided to carpool (1 designated driver….and it wasn’t me!) together and when the salad made it into the van, it very nearly didn’t make it out as there were six people eyeing it all the way there.

This salad was huge. The platter was a two foot square behemoth and when it was first unveiled, no one at the table thought we’d get through even half of it. Boy were we wrong. It was so good that there were only scraps left at the end.

Antipasta Salad

Prep Time: 20 mins | Cook Time: 0 hr 0 min | Servings: 8 | Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients:

2 heads romaine lettuce
1 head butter lettuce
1 bag of romaine, butter and radicchio mixed
1 can of marinated artichoke hearts
1 small can of black olives, sliced
1/2 red onion sliced thin
8 slices provolone
16 slices of hard salami
16 slices of spicy capicolla
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
Sliced pepperoni to taste
Fresh basil and parsley chopped and sprinkled in with lettuce
16 grape tomatoes halved
Pearl sized mozzarella balls
Pepperoncinis
4 Roma tomatoes, quartered

Directions:

Wash, dry and tear the lettuce. Mix all the lettuce. Sprinkle a little salt and dill on the leaves. Add a handful of chopped parsley and about 3 leaves of chopped basil to the mix. Lay 1/2 the lettuce mix on a platter. Layer 1 slice of provolone, 2 capicolla and 2 salami. Stack them together and slice into thin strips (cutting the long slices in halves or thirds). Repeat until all meat and cheese is used.

Add 1/2 of the mozzarella balls, pepperoni, tomatoes, artichoke hearts (cut into thirds), pepperoni is, olives, garbanzo beans, and red onion. Repeat with the remaining lettuce then the other ingredients.

Serve with Italian dressing of your choice.

One of the coolest part of the salad were the Mini Caprese Salad Bites. I love Caprese salad and these mini ones on a toothpick were a great addition to the salad.