ANTIPASTI

Here are a couple of recipes from my cooking class that focus on the start of the meal...best served with a prosecco or spritz aperol (aperol, prosecco and soda - recipe is on the back of the bottle of aperol) to whet the appetite...

These antipasti are all bread based so if you’re low carbing it, do not read on.

Sciacciata antipasti - top left

DOUGH

500g flour

20mls extra virgin olive oil (approx)

About 200-250mls water

25g fresh yeast (the type that gets mixed in water)

Pinch of salt

TOPPINGS!

Finely sliced/grated onions, sage, rosemary

Finely sliced zucchini

Finely sliced tomatoes

Preheat oven at 250 degrees (top and bottom element on)

Melt yeast in water

Place flour into a heap on a clean surface, pour water and oil into centre and mix from the centre outwards, adding a pinch of salt. 

Mix until a soft dough has formed, adding more water as needed.

Knead, using the heel of both palms to form a strong action which elongates the dough, for about 10 minutes.

Keep a small mound of flour to one side and use to clean hands periodically, making a new well in the centre and incorporating these little bits.

Form into a ball, incise a cross on the top with a very sharp knife, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for approx 1 hour.

Go and do something else for a while...

After an hour, spread the dough over a well-oiled flat rectangular baking tin and work gently to spread the dough uniformly over the pan, making sure to fill the corners. If you can’t reach it all out to the edges in one go, wait a bit and then come back to it about 5 minutes later.

Apply the 3 toppings to each third (surprise surprise they are the colours of the Italian flag), form small indentations by pression fingers over the onion section, dribble liberally with oil and sprinkle with salt (depending on how watery the tomatoes you use are you might not need much oil in that section.

Place in oven at 250 degrees (top and bottom element on) for 25-30 minutes. Serve at room temperature...

Cornetti (they look like little croissants when they come out of the oven, very cute) - bottom left hand corner

Preheat oven to 220 (top and bottom elements)

DOUGH

Flour

Extra virgin olive oil

Water

Fresh yeast

Pinch of salt

FILLINGS

Crumbled sausage meat (by this I mean an Italian sausage, not your standard Coles BBQ variety)

Ementhal cheese diced

Olive oil

Well beaten egg and sprinkle of salt

You could probably mix this up a bit depending on your tastes, but will leave that up to you to work out :)

Follow dough instructions as per recipe above but you don’t need to put a cross on the top of the dough ball for this one.

Roll dough out finely with rolling pin, cut strips about 3 inches wide, then cut these diagonally to form triangles.

In the base of each triangle, place a small quantity of sausage meat and a cube of cheese with a sprinkle of oil (very small quantity otherwise it’s too hard to roll).

Fold each corner of the base to cover the sides of this mixture and then roll over and over towards the point of the triangle, using the right hand to roll and the left hand to gently stretch the triangle tip.

Press the point of the triangle firmly closed and place on a greased/floured baking tray

Brush each with an egg and place in oven for 15-20 mins at 220 degrees.

ENJOY!!!