An Easy Appetizer Plate Recipe For Beautiful Starters

September 22, 2021 at 8:16 am · Filed under Appetizers-Hors d’Oeuvre, Recipes, The Nibble, Tip Of The Day

This appetizer isn’t fancy, but it’s on the menu of Noma, a three-Michelin-star restaurant run by chef René Redzepi in Copenhagen, Denmark. (The name is a syllabic abbreviation of the two Danish words nordisk (Nordic) and mad (food), and the restaurant is known for its reinvention and interpretation of New Nordic Cuisine. It aims to limit menu ingredients to those found or made in Scandinavia.

In 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014, Noma was ranked as the Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant magazine. It closed for a couple of years as Redzepi traveled the world studying foods of different cultures. As of 2019, the last year of rankings before the pandemic, it ranked #2.

The food isn’t necessarily haute cuisine. It’s more of a combination of flavors that bring excitement to the palate, and includes foraged ingredients that would never be found in food stores.

We particularly liked the ease of this appetizer plate. As you can see, these are foods that anyone can prepare.

THE NOMA APPETIZER PLATE

This appetizer plate includes fruits, vegetables and seeds, and lots of edible flowers for color. The sweet and savory selection includes:

Dressed lettuce leaf

Edible flowers

Grilled artichoke heart half

Grilled half orange slice

Grilled half fig

Half French radish

Marinated beets and atop a raw mushroom slice and spinach leaf

White mulberry and…

Some items we can’t identify, including the sauce*

Most of these items are easily found in your grocery store (especially if you substitute a blackberry for the mulberry).

We’re not so keen on edible flowers, which provide much of the color here. We’re just not wild about the flavor and most people don’t eat them anyway; so why waste the food and the money?

However, we substitute other colored vegetables: a grape tomato or half a cherry tomato, pickled red onion.

START THINKING ABOUT COLORS & SHAPES

Your plate will be most interesting if you select an assortment of colors and shapes; for example:

Green: asparagus, castelvetrano olives, fig, marinated green beans, sugar snap peas.

Orange: grilled orange bell pepper, kumquat, mango, pickled carrot, orange cherry or grape tomato, spiced mandarin or orange segments.

Purple: blackberries, boysenberrie, fig, grilled eggplant (grilled) Fruits: figs, purple cabbage.

Red: balsamic-marinated strawberry, grilled red bell pepper, radicchio, red leaf lettuce, red pepper flakes, tomato (grape, cherry)<./li>

Yellow: corn relish, grilled yellow bell pepper, grilled pineapple, yellow cherry or grape tomatoes.

White: grilled cauliflower floret, mashed turnip or parsnip, white cheese

Set them on a nice plate that shows off the plates and colors, and you’re in business.

Here’s a longer list of vegetables by color.

[1] This plate of mixed bites, artistically chosen, is a modern version of the classic mixed hors d’oeuvre or antipasto plate (photo © Restaurant Noma | Copenhagen).

BEYOND FRUITS & VEGETABLES

While Noma choose a vegan plate of fruits, vegetables and seeds, you can also include white proteins: baked fish, chicken breast slice, deviled egg or boiled/poached quail egg, grilled tofu, raw scallop, white anchovy, white cheese, etc.

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*It may be balsamic or black vinegar with a small amount of oil.

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