WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2003
FOOD
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 25
Italian antipasto stimulates senses
EAT THIS
Christina DiGiacomo
cdigiacomo@kansan.com
What could be the most refreshing and fulfilling meal on any hot summer day? An antipasto.
An Italian dish like this Antipasto Composto is sure to please any crowd. Served on rustic bread with fresh black olives and a variety of meats and cheeses—what's not to like?
Christina Digiacomo/Kansan
Antipasto, the Italian word for hors d'oeuvres, or appetizers, doesn't typically concentrate on foods like nachos, Buffalo wings and mozzarella sticks. Instead antipasto focuses on a variety of wonderful fares like breaded and fried zucchini called zucchini fritti. Salads, or insalatas are usually included in antipasto, as well as dishes mussels, clams and
Just as Italians like antipasto before a meal, Americans as well enjoy an array of appetizers. Yet at times, Americans solely like the hors d'oeuvres to be the center attraction in a meal.
In Italy, however, ordering only an antipasto and not a pasta secondi (entree), or piatto forte (strong plate), is seen as rude. Antipasto is meant to arouse the taste buds for the servings thereafter, so not ordering a meal after the antipasto is seen as an insult.
A typical Italian meal usually has four to seven courses and lasts for hours on end. The point of enduring such a long meal is because each dish brings equilibrium to the body, thus making a person feel not so full at the end of a meal.
fresh shrimp touched with a hint of garlic in a white wine cream sauce for only $8.95.
Or try one of my favorite dishes, Melanzane Othello. This dish features ricotta cheese filled with thin eggplant slices, simmered with a roasted red tomato sauce and blanketed with fresh mozzarella cheese, for only $6.95.
So next time you feel like Italian, why not venture off to a restaurant like Jasper's, 1201 W. 103rd St., Kansas City, Mo.?
Jasper's offers antipasto dishes like Scampi Alla Livornese. This dish features
Simplistic or intricate, trying any antipasto is guaranteed to excite your taste buds and stimulate your senses. Plus, antipasto dishes are always much cheaper and do not include the extra six servings of a true Italian feast.
But for that night in, try this wonderful and simple Antipasto Composto, a mixed-appetizer with all kinds of flavorful meats and cheeses. Go ahead, mangia, (eat) mangia (eat) and enjoy!
Antipasto Composto
6 slices of round Italian bread
1 clove of garlic
3 tablespoons of Paul Newman's Caesar Dressing
Dressing
6 slices each of proscuito, capicola, ham, salami
6 slices each of provolone cheese and aged Swiss cheese
20 Calamata olives, pitted
6-12 basil leaves
30 Toothpicks, used also for picking, olives, meats, and cheeses
1. Cut Italian bread into thin slices. Rub garlic clove on each slice of bread and arrange on platter.
2. Arrange sliced meats and cheeses
around platter. Place olives in the center Arrange basil leaves throughout dish and drizzle meats, cheeses and olives with Caesar dressing.
3. Top each bread slice with single slices of meats, cheeses,and basil,and serve.
DiGiacomo is an Apple Valley, Minn., senior in communication studies. She studied at Dante Alighieri cooking school in Florence, Italy.
SWEETS
Master chocolatier savors sweet taste of success
The Associated Press
KILCHBERG, Switzerland — Hans Geller has the dream job. He's paid to eat Swiss chocolate.
As master chocolatier with Lindt & Spruengli, Geller has spent every working day for the past 40 years developing and sampling premium chocolate bars, balls, batons, bunnies and any other sweet delights that roll off the production lines.
"I have never had the feeling that I can't look at another chocolate bar," he says, patting his trim stomach to illustrate that he's no glutton, and passionately evoking the pleasures of fine dark chocolate with a
He is, he declares, a happy man.
brandy or cup of strong coffee.
Even for unrepentant chocoholics, the smell of chocolate and the scale of production is overpowering. Mighty machines devour huge quantities of cocoa mass, sugar and cocoa butter, milk powder and a secret mix of spices. It then churns them out in a thick liquid mass to be refined, frozen, molded and aerated depending on the final product.
The factory operates 24 hours a day in the peak July, August and September period preparing for the Christmas market.
Workers are allowed to help themselves provided they respect strict hygiene rules. Strikingly, almost nobody is obese.
"Once you've been here a couple of
"Once you've been here a couple of months, you really don't feel like eating too much chocolate."
Bernhard Winzeler
Manager at Lindt & Spruengli
months, you really don't feel like eating too much chocolate," says Bernhard Winzeler, a manager. Almost simultaneously he plucks his favorite praline from the conveyor belt and pops it in his mouth.
Geller, the taster, has lost track of how many chocolate bars he has sampled. He and his fellow-tasters arrive for work at 7
a. m. to test the night's production, and repeat the procedure in the afternoon. Given that they "sample and spit," Geller says that he rarely eats more than equivalent of one bar — 3.5 ounces — a day.
That doesn't prevent him from nibbling in his spare time.
Geller says all his team members have a science or nutrition background and undergo two years of training.
But in addition to the professionals, Lindt & Spruengli also regularly uses enthusiastic amateurs. It has a network of 200 people in the Kilchberg area that it can call on to try out new products.
By means of payment, all the volunteers receive —what else?— a box of chocolates.