Gourmet appetizers: a way to impress yout friends and take them by throat

Do you want to spend a few hours in the company of friends in a formal but welcoming atmosphere? Do you want to offer your guests appetizers delicious and tasty but at the same time quick to prepare? Do you want to accompany the food with tasty cocktails, craft beers, wines from selected vineyards?

Italian cuisine is rich in a wide variety of appetizers, starting from the traditional Italian appetizer based on cold cuts such as ham, coppa, salami, culatello and enriched with vegetables in oil and vinegar up to ham and melon, crèpes, cream puffs, muffins and pâtés.

Or we can propose appetizers to combine with the aperitif consumed standing with small cold and hot tastings, surprising finger food to give life to a rich buffet.

We give you some tips on how to prepare excellent gourmet appetizers to surprise your guests.

Canapés: taste and simplicity to enrich your gourmet appetizer

Every self-respecting appetizer needs canapés with various tastes, shapes and ingredients.

The canapés bring joy to the table, as they are colorful, tasty and delicious and, depending on the ingredients used, you can meet the needs of everyone, from those who love fish or are vegetarian.
The basis of the canapé can be a bread crouton, bread or crackers.

You can prepare your canapés by spreading butter and garnishing with anchovies and capers or using cherry tomatoes cut into small cubes and seasoned with oil, salt, garlic and oregano. You can create refined canapés using caviar or use ready-made sauces (artichoke and tuna cream, curry mayonnaise, cocktail sauce, tuna sauce, tartar sauce).

Other ideas that we can offer you are croutons with cocktail sauce and shrimp or tuna sauce and tuna fillets. The advice is to use imagination to create combinations between ingredients and to take care of the decorations.

Curasau bread, excellent ingredient to create gourmet appetizers.

Curasau bread is a typical Sardinian bread widespread throughout Sardinia and beyond. It looks like a crunchy and very thin sheet and can be used in various ways.

Tasty is the millefeuille of Curasau bread prepared alternating sheets of bread with layers of seasoning. You can choose ready-made sauces, spreadable cheeses with the addition of salmon, tomato and mozzarella or any other ingredient to your taste.

The advice we give you is to prepare the millefeuille of curasau bread half an hour before being served on the table. Note that if you prepare it too long in advance it may lose its crunchiness and freshness.

If you want to give the Curasau bread a different shape, for example you want to create a swivel, you will have to wet the sheets of bread under cold water for a few seconds. After 5-10 minutes you will notice that they will have become softer and malleable.

At this point you can stuff the discs as you like (for example you can use cold cuts such as bacon and mozzarella or pesto) and give the shape of a swivel. Once the swivels are placed in a greased baking dish, placing them side by side, bake them until the bread appears golden.

With the same procedure you can make baskets and fill them with vegetables, ricotta and zucchini or other ingredients to your liking.

Puff pastry, a versatile product to create excellent gourmet appetizers

Another recommended product to create gourmet appetizers is puff pastry. You can use it to prepare pretzels with sausages, create dumplings with mozzarella and tomato paste, swivels with pesto or simply bake strips of puff pastry sprinkled with grated cheese.

An excellent combination for filling puff pastry dumplings can be mustard and smoked salmon.
If you have patience and good dexterity you can create puff pastry baskets.

Cutouts of the squares or rectangles from the puff pastry and put the rectangles in molds (you can use those from muffins for example) making the basket shape. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes, then take out of the oven and let cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the tuna cream by blending tuna, anchovies and spreadable cheese. The tuna cream will serve you to stuff the baskets. Then use your creativity to decorate the product in gourmet appetizers.

Pickles, in oil and breadsticks, products to enrich the buffet of gourmet appetizers.

Pickles, in oil and breadsticks are products that you find on the market ready-made. Simply choose your favorite product, a suitable bowl and you’re done.

You can choose between pickled vegetables, artichokes, spring onions, stuffed tomatoes and accompany them with breadsticks of chia seeds, quinoa, turmeric, tomato, olives, rosemary and many other flavors.

Drinking can not miss in the preparation of an excellent gourmet appetizer.

What to offer our guests to drink during a gourmet appetizer?
A prosecco or a sparkling wine is an excellent combination to accompany gourmet appetizers.

You can indulge yourself by trying cocktails based on fruit juice, prosecco and, if you like, add tonic water. You can try for example to add peach juice, passion fruit to prosecco, ice and garnish with fresh fruit.

The necessary ingredient to prepare gourmet appetizers, in addition to the choice of quality products, is certainly to use the imagination in combining ingredients and taking care of the decorations.