The Antipasto Table

Walk into any restaurant or trattoria in Italy and you'll be greeted by antipasto tables laden with platters of colorful salads, tender seafood dishes, regional salamis and cheeses, and fresh vegetables prepared in every way imaginable. With this inspiring collection of two hundred versatile, simple-to-prepare recipes, Michele Scicolone recreates these antipasto tables at home. The Antipasto Table includes many traditional favorites passed down by the author's family as well as new interpretations based on her own travels in Italy, and even some antipasti new to this country.

Imagine a table of hot antipasti -- fresh mozzarella rolled in bread crumbs and fried until crisp outside and melted within or grilled calamari with oregano and white wine. Or sample the cold dishes -- Sicilian eggplant salad or trout marinated in olive oil, vinegar, and sage. Bread-based antipasti include taralli, fennel-laced biscuits, perfect with a glass of red wine; and bruschetta, grilled country bread topped with fresh tomatoes and herbs or Gorgonzola and pine nuts.

This marvelous cookbook also features special sections on the art of preparing vegetables and selecting the proper wines to serve with antipasti. The Antipasto Table highlights the foods that make Italian cuisine so wonderfully appealing.

200 simple recipes for traditional Italian antipasti to serve as first courses, side dishes, or combined to create entire meals.

Walk into any restaurant or trattoria in Italy and you'll be greeted by antipasto tables laden with platters of colorful salads, tender seafood dishes, regional salamis and cheeses, and fresh vegetables prepared in every way imaginable. With this inspiring collection of two hundred versatile, simple-to-prepare recipes, Michele Scicolone recreates these antipasto tables at home. The Antipasto Table includes many traditional favorites passed down by the author's family as well as new interpretations based on her own travels in Italy, and even some antipasti new to this country.

Imagine a table of hot antipasti -- fresh mozzarella rolled in bread crumbs and fried until crisp outside and melted within or grilled calamari with oregano and white wine. Or sample the cold dishes -- Sicilian eggplant salad or trout marinated in olive oil, vinegar, and sage. Bread-based antipasti include taralli, fennel-laced biscuits, perfect with a glass of red wine; and bruschetta, grilled country bread topped with fresh tomatoes and herbs or Gorgonzola and pine nuts.

This marvelous cookbook also features special sections on the art of preparing vegetables and selecting the proper wines to serve with antipasti. The Antipasto Table highlights the foods that make Italian cuisine so wonderfully appealing.

Publishers Weekly

Not to be confused with the ubiquitous Italian-American ``antipasto salad,'' genuine ``antipasti'' are delightful hot or cold hors de'oeuvres--the kind of delicacies perched on the ``antipasto table'' at restaurants and trattorie all over Italy. And although, according to Scicolone ( Fish Steaks and Fillets ) in Italian ``antipasto'' means ``before the meal,'' these ``are not mere appetizers.'' In some Italian restaurants, devouring antipasti is a course-after-course indulgence similar in concept to dining on Spanish tapassic . Recipes here, though admirably detailed with substitutions and well-organized methods, are particularly impressive for their simplicity and ease of preparation. Among them are sauteed peppers with balsamic vinegar, orange, parmesan and walnut salad, and mussels with caper mayonnaise--including a method for cleaning and preparing mussels and clams. Instructions for home-drying a bumper crop of ripened plum tomatoes are here, as well as recipes for such uniquely Italian specialties as crusty, chewy Tuscan bread, crispy semolina focaccia and crunchy Sardinian flat bread. An up-front ``antipasto pantry'' section and menus for combining antipasti make this volume doubly useful. Author tour; HomeStyle Book Club alternate. (June)

Michele Scicolone is a food and travel writer and cooking teacher whose articles appear in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wine Spectator, and many other publications. She is the author of Savoring Italy, Pizza Any Way You Slice It! (coauthored with her husband, Charles, an Italian wine expert), A Fresh Taste of Italy, La Dolce Vita, and The Antipasto Table. She lives in New York City and visits Italy several times each year.