Giada's Antipasto Salad How-To | Food Network

antipasto salad is my version of a light Italian appetizer it starts with cooked foods any pasta then I pile on the salami provolone and cheese olives and Turkey my homemade vinaigrette with basil red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard makes this even better just toss it all together and this antipasto salad is ready to eat I've cooked the fusilli in salted boiling water for about 10 minutes until it's al dente and now they are ready to come out and I've done it ahead of time so the pasta has time to cool before I dress it I'll just take it all out and I love the little ridges on the fusilli they're also known as corkscrew pasta and the little ridges allow the dressing and all of the ingredients to sort of get trapped inside and really flavor the pasta really well while the pasta cools I'm gonna start on the dressing I'm gonna make a very light and refreshing dressing basically I'm making a basil vinaigrette and you can do this with any kind of herbs what I love about the basil is its sweet aroma it's super fragrant and it's slightly sweet and we're gonna add a little bit of red wine vinegar now this dressing is very light so I want to use a vinegar I'm just gonna pop the top off I want to use the vinegar that's really clean and so red wine vinegar is much cleaner than balsamic and lighter so a little bit of vinegar and some Dijon mustard for a little bit of a tang and also because it's sort of gonna thicken the dressing just a little bit perfect Dijon mustard and it's made with white wine so it's really got a nice deep flavor and we're gonna also add olive oil extra virgin olive oil that's super fruity and it's gonna make the dressing nice and smooth okay and some salt of course to bring out all the flavors in the vinaigrette some freshly ground black pepper and we need one clove of garlic give it a quick little crush and then that'll just help peel it all right garlic in now we just want to blend it and you'll get a nice smooth dressing great all right mmm SMO that basil so the pastas ready I'm just gonna toss the pasta with the vinaigrette see how beautiful and green that is daddy yummy and we'll just mix it all together the idea of an antipasto platter is that it comes before the meal for an Italian family and I'm turning it into my favorite pasta salad now for the rest of my ingredients I'm gonna add some smoked turkey and I love smoked turkey obviously cuz I love that smoky flavor and it just sort of has big flavor and that big flavor goes really well with the pasta and the salami and all the cheese's and just toss it right on top of the pasta and this is great as a snack item I make this on the weekends and then I leave it in the fridge and Tom and I can snack on it all week long a little bit of salami and we're gonna throw in some green olives and I pit and slice them already and now for my favorite cheese's some provolone now the thing about provolone a-- is it's nice and sharp it's a soft cow's milk cheese but it's got this nice sharp flavor so again it works really well with the smokiness of the turkey and a salami I will just cut it in little cheese here and then a little bit of a sad Jill and now side you cheese is um it's similar to pull Valona but it's aged longer so it's saltier and a little bit firmer just cut that into cubes down there and then cut it again won't toss it in there one last item some roasted red peppers a little bit of salt and some black pepper and you want to be careful with adding the salt because the cheese's are salty and the olives are salty so you add a little bit of salt go ahead and taste it and then if you want to add more salt you can do that later looks great see how pretty that looks all those beautiful colors there we go a little Turkey pepper all of them maybe a little salami there too

Channel: Food Network

Views: 288,951

Keywords: recipe, pasta, turkey, appetizer, casual, summer, fusilli, garlic, basil, italian, giada, giada de laurentiis, food, food network, cooking, how-to, everyday italian, antipasto, antipasto salad, appetizer recipes, smoked turkey, salami, cheese

Id: oQj89mrfKAM

Length: 5min 22sec (322 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2009