The Crooked Ladle

Charcuterie, Crudités or Just Individual Appetizer?

Charcuterie, Crudités or Just Hors d'oeuvre - You be the Judge

Appetizer - Charcuterie - Crudités - Hors d'oeuvre

A charcuterie (one common pronunciation is "shahr-koo-tuh-ree") board is primarily comprised of meats. A crudité (pronounced "kroo-dee-teh") tray is made up primarily of vegetables. This appetizer is a combination of a charcuterie and crudité with a few other snacks thrown in. There are so many positives to point out about these miniature appetizer servings, like, they are not only fun to make and serve, but can satisfy a lot of the taste bud flavor sensations (sweet, sour, bitter, savory, salty) and textures such as soft, crunchy and chewy. You can have as much variety as you want and customize the glasses. For instance, I used garlic olives in all of my glasses except for one. My husband can’t eat garlic so, I used pimento olives in his glass. What I especially love is that this appetizer doesn't require any cooking and it’s so easy and fast to put together. Furthermore, nowadays these individual serving glasses are perfect so guests don’t have to share food in a buffet style fashion. You're going to want to have guests over just so you can make and serve this fun appetizer.

Serves: up to 6

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 0

Suggested Tools:

· Cutting board · Sharp knife · Colander · Vegetable peeler · Tooth picks · Cocktail forks (disposable - you can buy on Amazon) · Minimum 2-ounce glasses (if you go larger, you’ll need to add more ingredients which is fine, of course). You can find these on Amazon.com if you search "2 ounce glass shot glasses".

Ingredients:

· 12 thinly sliced dried salami

· 6 olives (drained and gently patted dry)

· 1 carrot, very thinly sliced (12 - 2.5 to 3 inch slices)

· 6 marinated artichoke heart halves

(rinsed, drained, gently patted dry)

· 6 cheese cubes

· 18 Pretzels, long thin sticks (For gluten-free use GF pretzels)

Others Ingredient Alternatives:

· Other meats (peperoni slices, cooked sausage slices)

· Sweet gherkin pickles (other types of pickles sliced thinly)

· Marinated hot peppers

· Cucumber slices

· Fresh bell peppers (green, orange, red)

· Celery stick, sliced very thin (2.5 to 3 inches)

· Grape/cherry tomatoes

· Nuts (in the bottom of the glass in leiu of olives)

Instructions:

1. For this recipe, I will be adding six different nibble snacks to the appetizer glass. I suggest you begin by laying out all of your ingredients onto your countertop staging area. Then, do any necessary cutting such as for vegetables or cheese cubes.

2. First, place one olive in the bottom of each glass. Then add the tallest ingredients which on my ingredient list, here, would be the cheese cube inserted onto the cocktail fork and the artichoke heart inserted onto another cocktail fork.

3. Next, skewer two thin salami slices onto a toothpick. Please refer to the below video to view how to roll and skewer the salami onto the toothpick. Insert the salami stick into the miniature glass. I like to stick mine into the olive at the bottom of the glass so it stays in place.

4. Next, add a couple of very thinly sliced carrots into the glass. Lastly, add the three pretzels. In fact, I would add these not too long before serving so the pretzels do not soften as they might touch a companion ingredient that could moisten the pretzel, which you want to avoid.

If possible, place your filled appetizer glasses on a suitably sized serving platter just prior serving.

Note: If you are making these a few hours before serving, I suggest temporarily placing the filled glasses in a small baking loaf pan for easier transport to and from the refrigerator. You should note that these particular glasses tend to tip over somewhat easily in transport; so maneuver them carefully.