Macbook Lion Recovery Disk Utilities cannot detect newly installed SSD
Boot into Recovery from the USB.
Instead of opening Disk Utility, open Terminal instead.
Run the command diskutil list to see that your drive is being recognised. It should list two disks, one being your bootable drive, the other your SSD, and provide you with a disk identifier (such as disk0). If it doesn't show up, check that you have installed it properly.
If it is showing up, then type diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPT JHFS+ MacHD to correctly set the partition map to GPT and create a HFS+ Journaled volume. Change disk0 to the appropriate identifier for your SSD. You can rename the 'MacHD' volume later in Disk Utility or Finder, if you wish.
Quit Terminal.


You should now be able to pick up the disk in Disk Utility and Time Machine to restore your backup.