After a long, cold winter, the arrival of spring recharges our desire to get outdoors and soak up the sun. At Diforti, we like to take advantage of the sunny weather by grabbing a blanket, one of our food hampers and a bottle opener (crucial for enjoying that bottle of wine!) and heading outdoors for a picnic. Whether you’re going on a date, a family walk or an outdoorsy lunch with friends, Italian antipasti makes perfect picnic fare. Here’s how to put together the perfect picnic, Italian-style, and make the most of sunny spring.
Italian antipasti is truly ideal picnic fare, as it allows you to graze on lots of little things while chatting away with your company. A well-rounded assortment of antipasti provides options for everyone. Our Classic Antipasti Selection is great for picnics because of its variation: with semi-dried cherry tomatoes, olives, cheese-stuffed red sweet peppers, marcona almonds, pecorino cheese, Italian breadsticks and salame, you’ve got a choice of crunchy, rich, refreshing, salty and meaty flavours, and you can take a bit of everything.
If you are a meat lover, you can bulk up your picnic with an array of meats. The key here is to assemble a platter of meats with different qualities: some thinly sliced and some a bit thicker, some milder and some a bit heavier and saltier. Diforti’s Italian Meat Selection food hamper does the work for you, offering coppa, prosciutto crudo, mortadella, garlic and rosemary olives and baked cheese chips for an assembly of meats and snacks that ticks all the boxes.
Of course, a solid selection of cheeses is key to a satisfying picnic. As with meats, it’s important to consider variation when you’re selecting cheeses. Soft, semi-soft, hard, tangy, salty, mild, pungent—choose the qualities you like, and pick a few cheeses to give you a range of choices. Our Perfect Pairings Wine & Cheese Box is an excellent example of this method—with Nero d’Avola wine-infused Pecorino, Taleggio, aged truffle Pecorino and Gorgonzola Dolce cheese, there’s a something for everyone. Plus, the box contains Marcona almonds for snacking and bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon-Nero, a red wine that perfectly complements the cheeses.
Which brings us to another important element of any picnic: beverages. Wine is obviously the go-to option for accompanying antipasti, and with good reason. The acidity of wine often makes it a great pairing with salty antipasti and cheeses. White wines like La Cala Vermentino di Sardegna are refreshing for picnics on hot days, and red wines such as Amarone Della Valpolicella Classico are lovely to sip at evening picnics, as the day cools down. Arm yourself with a bottle of still or sparkling water, as well, to make sure you stay hydrated in the sun.
No picnic is complete without a little sweet treat at the end. After nibbling on antipasti, Italian pastries make a satisfying end to a meal. Diforti’s Traditional Sweet Bundle, with its four different types of pastries, is a delicious dessert for indecisive picnic-goers (we call dibs on the cappuccino cream cannoli!).
While we could never refuse Italian antipasti on any occasion, we think that picnics are an especially great time to break out the snacks, meats and cheeses. Our Italian food shop has everything you need to assemble the picnic of your dreams, so choose your food hamper and get outside while spring is in the air!