Q&A: The art of holiday entertaining with Bebe Black Carminito
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.
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 sommelier. She’d actually come in to buy makeup for the James Beard awards. I did her makeup and helped her pick up colors to match her dress and whatnot. And then I told her, “I’ve always wanted to be a pastry chef or get in the food industry.” And she goes, “Why don’t you come do a stage at A16?” (Editor’s note: A stage is a European-style restaurant kitchen internship that can last a few days to several weeks.)
That was my opening to the food world. I worked at A16, and then I worked at Marla Bakery and 20th Century Cafe. I’ve been in the food world for about eight years.
Q: How did you get into food styling?
A: I went to France, and did a workshop with (cookbook author) Mimi Thorisson. Her husband was a photographer. I loved the aesthetic, visual approach to food. I came back home to San Francisco and wanted to be a food stylist. I started assisting other photographers and other food stylists, and I realized that that was really my path. I really like the marriage of food styling and recipe development.
I emailed Molly Decoudreaux, who’s a very prolific food photographer here in the Bay Area and offered to be an assistant. At that time, she was shooting Leslie Jonath’s cookbook, who ended up being my agent years later. It’s all come full circle.
Q: How did your background in cosmetics translate into food styling?
A: A lot of the same aspects from aesthetics and beauty definitely apply to food styling — color, balance, composition, lighting, contour and highlights. As for tools, I still use brushes and makeup wedges for food. I prop certain things underneath for height. I still use a mist bottle to refresh food. And tweezers.
Q: Why is it important for food to look beautiful?
A: We eat with our eyes first. Food photography and food styling definitely play a part in how we feast with our eyes. When we go to a restaurant or look at a menu online, we see a menu photo, and if the food doesn’t look appetizing, it’s not a winner. You want it to look delicious. You’re visualizing how it would taste, and if the food didn’t look pretty, or if the lighting wasn’t good, or the color wasn’t fresh looking, you probably wouldn’t venture out to that restaurant or make that recipe.
Q: What are some tips for creating a holiday entertaining board that’s going get your guests excited to nibble?
A: First, find out your guests’ dietary restrictions. Know the size of crowd you’re hosting so that you can have the appropriate amount of food. Go for bright, vivid, punchy color and just have fun. That’s my biggest tip in my book: have fun.
A lot of the recipes can be mixed or interchanged. And store-bought is fine. You can also do a lot of sourcing through farmers markets, online, from your grocer or your pantry. You probably have a lot of the things you already need. You don’t need a huge state-of-the-art kitchen. I work out of a 70-square-foot kitchen and a 450-square-foot apartment.
Meet the author
Carminito’s will do a book signing with snacks from noon to 3 p.m on Nov. 16 at the Oaktown Spice Shop, 546 Grand Ave. in Oakland; and a book signing and snacks pop-up from 1 to 4 p.m. Nov. 17 at Old Salt Merchants at 2935 College Ave. in Berkeley. Find details at atinysoiree.com/events.