The best appetizers are full of flavor, fun to look at, and, ideally, take very little effort to prepare. Vegetable crudites fit those requirements but they aren't exciting.
A delicious appetizer--albeit one for those without caloric restrictions--is a piece of prosciutto with a slice of triple cream and a topping of fig puree. The key to this dish is using high quality ingredients: Saint Andre triple cream, a good Italian prosciutto, and ripened farmers' market fresh figs.
The prosciutto can be rolled up but leaving it open is visually pleasing. Anyone picking one up will naturally do the rolling themselves.
Delicious any time of day: for breakfast, a light lunch with a salad, or in the evening with cocktails and wine.
Despite the warm weather we’ve been enjoying in Southern California, a recent trip to my local grocery store reminded me that fall is here – pyramid-like mounds of pumpkins filled the entrance, flanked by bins of apples of every variety.
Plump, sweet, and juicy—these are the best-tasting plums. Late summer brings with it all the different types of plums—colors of white, black, red and shapes of round and oval. There are too many varieties to list here. And don't forget pluots, a cross between plums and apricots. I love to eat them fresh—and you know they're good when the juices run down your arm. But as you've seen by reading here, I also adore plums in simple, homey desserts.
We make a lot of fuss over heirloom peach varieties that date back to the 1960s and tomatoes that go back as far as the 1930s. But did you know that the Bartlett pear, that standard grocery store fruit, actually dates back to the 1770s? The Bartlett, called the Williams pear in England where it was first found, gets its name from Enoch Bartlett, who was the first person to sell the trees in the U.S. in the early 1800s.