Big Adventures with Little Foods

Baby Showers are always fun for us to do, and they go hand in hand with our specialty – minis!  The best possible back drop (Malibu’s amazing coastline!), great weather, and scrumptious bites all came together creating a fabulous It’s a Girl!  baby shower earlier this month.  As we do for many of our bites events, we did a beautiful stationary display as well as some tray passed appetizers, a dessert display, and refreshing drinks for the hot August sun such as homemade strawberry lemonade and Bellinis!

Our creative client also added some great touches – personalized water bottles, shell place mats, beautiful flower arrangements, and baby shower decorations hanging from the umbrellas.  Don’t worry if these ideas don’t come naturally to you – we are here to help and have lots of ideas for fun and fabulous displays for every occasion.

Some menu highlights are:

Watermelon Cube Salads
Sweet and Savory fruit salad served in watermelon cups

Sesame Crusted Seared Ahi Tuna
Served on a wonton crisp with Asian slaw and plum sauce

Quesadilla Duo
Goat cheese-chorizo quesadillas with guacamole, tequila salsa and crema
Roasted Vegetable Quesadillas with tropical fruit salsa and crema

Mini BBQ Bacon Cheeseburgers
Served on a homemade brioche bun

Give us a call so we can help you customize the menu for your next event!

Flower arrangements by Bobbi D’Itri

The Bobbi D’Itri storefront is in Beverly Hills on South Santa Monica Blvd.

To be “Couture” means to be made by hand…we lovingly make everything at Bite by hand – FRESH!!!  One of our favorites is flat bread and pizzas…we use these babies to do everything from flatbread pizzas to mini homemade gyros!  Check out that gorgeous dough…and Chef Martin putting some MUSCLE into it!  In the background you’ll notice our lunch…PIZZA!!!  YUMMERS

Just a sample of some of the yumminess going on this week…nutty caramel shortbread bars and Mini Lemon-Blueberry Pies…aren’t they gorgeous?  Lucky clients getting these…give me a hot cup of freshly brewed tea, a couple of these and I am SET!

Get out your party shoes, send out those invitations, and return those RSVPs; the festive time of year has arrived! The parties will surely be plentiful! Let’s see, you’ll have the work party, a family gathering, the old friend’s get together, and of course don’t forget the yearly charity event! With all of these parties, the tough part is keeping things fresh and exciting.

Here are some tips to help you stage a fresh, modern holiday party. There are two key elements to a cocktail party…the cocktails and the food! You might think you can get away with having a foodless cocktail party, but about an hour in you will see that you have made a terrible mistake as your guests begin to kick off their shoes and clear a space on the table top for a dance floor.

A popular approach for today’s cocktail parties is to choose a few select signature drinks. Rather than having a full bar, which can be quite costly, you choose two or three drinks to go along with the theme of your party. Set up drink stations for your various signature drinks! Let’s say that your drink menu is: artisan craft beer, local wines, Bellinis, and martinis. You can create three stations out of this menu and accompany each drink station with a stationary appetizer or two.

The first station is your beer and wine station. Cover the table with a linen and some holiday decorations. Arrange the beer and wine on the table along with the appropriate glassware. Create markers with the name and a brief description of each beer/wine so people know what they are drinking and are more inclined to try something new. Accompany the beer and wine with a beautiful display of artisan cheeses, fresh fruit, nuts, breads, and crackers.

The second station is the Bellini bar. This station has Prosecco and some fruit purees so people can create the flavor of their choice. Popular Bellini flavors are pear, cranberry (or mix the two for a great pear cranberry flavor), peach, and mango. Again, arrange the table with a linen, decorations, bottles of Prosecco, and you can have fun filling up assorted mason jars or pitchers with the various fruit purees. The colorful fruit purees make a lovely display on their own. Have fun making a sign letting people know how to prepare their own Bellini. Add a plate of assorted crostinis with seasonal flavors and colors to accompany the Bellini station. One of Bite’s winter favorites is pear and winter squash with crispy sage and freshy shaved ricotta salata.

Finally, have fun creating a martini station. Offer a traditional gin or vodka martini, a cosmopolitan, and something fun and sweet like a lemon drop or an apple martini. You can offer one, two, or all of them at this drink station. A Brie and artichoke dip and a spicy shrimp cocktail would work perfectly here.
Accompany the stations with some warm tray-passed appetizers or you can keep it casual and self-serve with the stationary displays. Either way, your guests will be sure to enjoy the creative and festive atmosphere, and your tables won’t show marks from those dancing shoes!

Give Bite Catering a call to help you plan your next Holiday Party.

Great video by Jamie Oliver, winner of the Ted Prize on the need to take on ignorance around food.

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Saw an interesting note on a chefs competition– for hospital food!  Food Contest Helps Hospital Chefs Move Beyond ‘First, Do No Harm’ – WSJ.com.

Hospital food, which has traditionally ranked somewhere between prison chow and high-school cafeteria fare on the institutional dining scale, has undergone a transformation recently. Jell-O molds and soggy sandwiches are out; crusted trout and fresh-baked scones are in. Hospitals are installing pizza ovens, sushi stations and salad bars featuring organic produce. And they’re hiring chefs from big-name hotels and restaurants.

Not sure if the cuisine at a hospital will ever become daily fare, but it is terrific that food is becoming increasingly a focus.  Great food can heal and its a shame that hospitals have not considered the food they serve as part of the treatment paradigm.

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