During the pandemic, San Francisco food stylist Bebe Black Carminito was looking for a new ritual to replace Friday night dinners out with her husband. So she started building weekly “nibble boards” for the couple to share — and soon found herself with a new career as an Instagram darling with a cookbook deal.
The result is “The Curated Board: Inspired Platters & Spreads for Any Occasion” (Abrams, $25). The book offers how-tos for 28 riffs on the party platter theme and 60 recipes to make those spreads pop. There are grand antipasti platters with skewered bites and epic cheese boards with decadent dips, a pescatarian challah bagel brunch spread, a Mad Men-era cocktail party and more.
With holiday season looming, party occasions will be plentiful for all of us. So naturally, we had questions. Many, many questions.
Q: What can you tell us about the new cookbook? It offers so much visual inspiration for hosting and putting together spreads…
A: It’s very visual. There are a lot of food styling tips and ways to enhance the overall aesthetic of each board. What I love about it is that it was born out of the pandemic.
Q: How did that get started?
A: During lockdown, I started building charcuterie and cheese boards each Friday. Every Thursday, I would test a recipe and source whatever the menu was going to be. They would change thematically from week to week, like a Mediterranean theme or a Mexican theme. I would post them on Instagram with the hashtag #nibbleboardfriday. I had an agent reach out to me and say “I think you might have a book deal here. Do you want to write a proposal?”
That’s basically how the book came to fruition. It was a really good time to have something creative to do. It really kept me forward-thinking, creative and driven. Now (the book’s) been out about a month and a half, and it’s been like a whirlwind of activity.
“The Curated Board: Inspired Platters and Spreads for Any Occasion” by Bebe Black Carminito (Abrams, $25) showcases a collection of beautiful snack boards with recipes tailored to different celebrations around the year. Of the 28 menus in the book, seven were from contributors including Micah Siva, Katia Berberi and Steve Drapeau with Anne’s Toum, Rezel Kealoha, Eric Lundy, Christine Gallary and Amisha Gurbani. (Courtesy Abrams)
Q: Have you always been in the food space?
A: I was actually a makeup artist. I did makeup for over 20 years. I’d always wanted to be in food, but I didn’t really know how to go about doing that. One time, my ex-husband brought home a Martha Stewart magazine in the ’90s, and I was just like, “Oh my God. What is this? I love her. I want to be her.” That opened the door for me to think about doing food one day.
I was doing makeup at Saks Fifth Avenue, and Shelley Lindgren came in. She’s the owner of A16 and a …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
