Antipasto (Labor-Intensive)

It's always a joy to watch cooking shows on television.

One of my favorites is The Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten. She presents as  a very  pleasant, fun-loving, and, well, just nice person. She has a pretty smile, too, and makes everything she's cooking seem real easy. 

On one of her shows that I watched recently, she showed how to make a roasted artichoke antipasto that looked absolutely luscious. It looked like a winner to bring to a birthday party so I made a version of the salad.

Because the recipe is copyrighted, and I have a healthy respect for copyrights, the recipe is not included in this post. You can easily find it, however, by going to Google and typing in "roasted artichoke salad by Barefoot Contessa."

Finding packages of frozen artichoke hearts was a challenge but they were finally located at a local Stop and Shop supermarket.

There were a lot of ingredients to buy and a lot of preparation that required chopping, such as fresh basil, parsley,  red onion, roasted red pepper, and shallot. Luckily, the food processor helped to make the dressing.

 

The recipe called for olive oil and  fresh squeezed lemon juice.

 

I found mozzarella balls, not in a container, but in the Stop and Shop supermarket olive bar!

Ina's recipe called for prosciutto wrapped bread sticks. On my antipasto, I added bread sticks but didn't buy the prosciutto, because it's quite expensive and I had already put down quite a few bucks on the other ingredients. (By the way, the bread sticks were not popular and most of them were left on the platters.)

After the labor intensive roasted artichoke salad was made, I rolled a pound of salami, half a pound of roast beef, and half a pound of pepperoni. Now that's a heck of a lot of rolling, kids.

Also, the website version of the recipe calls for two jars of roasted peppers.  Personally, I think that's an error. Two large pieces, from just one jar, were quite sufficient, once they were thinly sliced.

The antipasto, I actually made two of them,  turned out to be colorful offerings to bring to a birthday party.  I'm happy to share that one of the "silver" trays was found, still in original store wrapping, in a Goodwill for 75 cents!

 Will I make roasted artichoke antipasto salad often? Nay. Too much work---as a matter of fact, way too much work.

Today we are joining Show and Tell Friday on Cindy's blog, My Romantic Home.  Check out all the other entries!

DO YOU MAKE ANTIPASTO?