Best Display award at More Than Just Desserts benefiting the Arthritis Society of Kitchener

On Thursday March 22, 2012, Select's team competed once again for Best Dessert and Best Hors D'oeuvre at the annual More Than Just Desserts event benefiting the Arthritis Society of Kitchener.  Chef Kelvin and Victoria donated their time and some delicious little treats to this event, to compete with local restaurants and caterers.  New to this year's competition was an award for Best Display, and we brought out all the big guns to create our Summer Garden Party themed table.  The weeks of design planning and crafting paid off, we won for Best Display!

We had about an hour before guests arrived to create the table, here is the display finished and waiting for the food to complete the look.  The food items were a big part of our display, but the "bones" of the display still look fresh and summer-y 

 The bunting banner in front of the table was created by Victoria, as seen in many outdoor and casual themed weddings lately.  DIY touches bring everything together and keep the display looking relaxed.  

Chef Kelvin starts putting together the first food items for display 

We love the lemons, wouldn't this be perfect under a lemonade and iced tea table at an outdoor reception? 

The finished display with hors d'oeuvres and mini desserts.  Our hors d'oeuvres were grilled zucchini wrapped around cherry tomatoes stuffed with tarragon reduction goat cheese.

The official debut of our miniature shot glass desserts!   From left to right: Mississippi Mud Pie, Mango and Raspberry Mousse Parfait, and Lemon "Meringue" Pie.  Tiny spoons are available to the left of the desserts, so you can savour every bite!

 

  

 

Thank you to everyone who came out to support this great cause!  We'll be back next year to defend our title!

Corporate open house reception at the office

Fancy new office on the third floor?  Check.  Sleek and modern furniture?  Check.  Open house fast approaching, but who can cater without a real kitchen?  No problem, we've got you covered!  We bring it all with us, including portable convection ovens so your hors d'oeuvres are served hot from the oven, and all we need is a space to work in with power and water.  Last month we catered the open house celebration for Electronic Arts in downtown Kitchener (working out of one of their meeting rooms called "Paradigm Shift") for about 60 guests.  Guests popped in and out at their leisure, and we set out snacks throughout the office for guests to discover as they wandered the new space.  Once most guests had arrived, we passed a selection of hot hors d'oeuvres.

 

Parmesan shortbread with Chevre pecan dip, set out as a welcoming snack on the reception desk

Stephanie sets up on the bar on an unoccupied workstation - no need to bring in clumsy portable bars, any space can be used. 

High bar tables with contemporary stretch black covers were brought in to space around the office, offering a place to set down your glass while you help yourself to a stuffed cherry tomato.

A cheese and fruit display board with crackers, set out on a workstation desk

An assortment of crisp flatbreads with our lime chutney hummus

Recent cake creations

Celebrations cakes don't need to come from the grocery store or your local wholesale club - try your local caterer for a cake made from scratch!  Last month we created several cakes for one of our corporate clients, wouldn't you love to be in the office for all of these birthdays and celebrations?  All cakes were created from scratch by Chef Kelvin.

Chocolate cake with our "Mars bar" icing and finished with chocolate curls

Beautiful spring-themed birthday cake 

 

Valentine's thank-you cake

Focus on corporate lunch platters

The first few months of the year after the holidays are traditionally slow in the hospitality industry, and caterers are no exception.  While we're resting up from a busy two months at Christmas, we're also refocusing on our day-to-day catering, like all of the pretty platters we make for our corporate clients.  These are some of our favourite platters - they're bright and colourful, or just plain tasty.

Our latest addition to the corporate sandwich platter line-up: The Make Your Own Sandwich Platter.  This arrangement features sliced beef, ham, and smoked turkey with cheddar, Swiss, and provolone cheeses, along with an assortment of breads and condiments.  Perfect for a casual lunch office meeting, or a brunch reception at your home.

A real staff and customer favourite, our Traditional Sandwich Platter is sure to please any crowd.  Cocktail-sized pieces are perfect for afternoon stand-up receptions, or a working meeting.  

 Featuring beef and horseradish, tuna salad, ham and Swiss, Brie and red pepper jelly on open-faced baguette, and egg salad croissants.

Our Vegetarian Antipasto Platter.  Forget the salty deli meats, this platter packs in tons of flavour without all the nitrates.  Pairs perfectly with breads and crispy flatbread.

Wedding tasting for an August outdoor tent reception at the Rockwood Ruins

It's really difficult to imagine all the little details of your outdoor wedding reception in the middle of frigid January.  We get it, it's easy to slip into thoughts of hot and comforting meals while you're bundled up inside, and it's really tricky to put yourself in summer mood when it's months away.  If you got engaged over the holidays and you're planning for a summer wedding, don't forget to think summer!  Stay away from heavy meals and hot soup, even if it's the first thing that comes to mind right now in heavy planning mode.  

One of our summer brides for this year came in for her wedding tasting this weekend.  The couple currently lives in Alberta and is planning their KW area wedding from a distance, so organizing convenient times for everyone meant a deep winter tasting with visions of sunny summer days far in the distance.

The biggest challenge on the catering end of things for a winter tasting for a summer event is working around the seasonal produce that is most definitely not available at this time of year.  Our goal with every tasting is to show you our taste profile, presentation ideas, and portions, but it's harder to do this when a key ingredient or garnish is out of season.  Every plate we create focuses on what is fresh and in season, both to keep costs low and to provide the best flavour and taste for the dish.  This can be a slight hiccup during a tasting, when we're trying to serve a plate that screams "summer" when it's lacking the real taste of fresh summer produce.

We held the tasting in our store front shop, the Hungry Olive, which offers our guests enough space to move around, and allows us to keep the experience closer to what they will see at the event - they chat and mingle at the table, and food is brought out to them.  We've previously blogged about keeping the tasting experience in-line with the event plan here, when we held a tasting for a summer bride's market station reception.

Our daily special board becomes a welcoming sign for our guests 

 We keep the experience at the tasting as close to the real thing as we can - table settings, linens, glassware, the works.  

The first course is our signature Bouquet salad, featuring romaine lettuce tied with a cucumber ribbon.  Our salads were unfortunately missing the edible fresh flowers (which we grow in our own garden in the summer) and micro greens, but the overall presentation is what we were after, as well as the taste of the dish. 

We finished the salad with a classic balsamic vinaigrette 

Paulette and Aengus are offering their guests a choice of three entrees, and we showed them a variety of options to choose from at the tasting.  The vegetarian dish is a grilled vegetable and phyllo stack, and the fish entree is herb and citrus crusted tilapia with a pineapple salsa. 

Grilled vegetable stack with a rustic tomato sauce 

 We showed the couple three different styles of chicken for the entree - classic roasted chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese and tomato pesto, a chicken supreme stuffed with ricotta and sage, and a mole-rubbed boneless 1/2 chicken.  The tilapia was cooked on our grill (the next best thing to a barbecue in the middle of winter) on a cedar plank.

We plated the chicken supreme to give them a sense of how it would all come together, and we presented the other chicken options on a platter for everyone to try.

Finished plate - rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes, grilled balsamic marinated summer vegetables, and grilled chicken supreme with a white wine sauce.

We finished the tasting with a layered raspberry and vanilla panna cotta.  This is a great alternative to ice cream or sorbet when your venue does not have enough power to bring in a freezer.  We bring all of the food for an event in our refrigerated catering trailer, and making the menu very fridge-friendly saves on power needs.  The panna cotta is topped with mixed berry compote and garnished with mint.

Kitchen Production Behind the Scenes - It takes a lot of food to feed 1000 people

Who do you call when you need to feed hundreds of people a hot holiday meal?  Select Service of course!  We catered hot turkey dinners for more than 1000 people last week - 800 people over three days for a factory near our commissary kitchen, and 250 people over three shifts for a factory in Kitchener.  We've heard nothing but wonderful comments from all of the staff who enjoyed the meals.  That's because we make it all deliciously from scratch, even when the numbers move up to four digits.

We spent our week peeling, chopping, roasting, and mashing, and you better believe our gravy is made from scratch!

 Imogen takes a quick rest on the last few stacks of potatoes.  This pile was originally a lot larger - we bought 600 lbs of potatoes for the week, along with 155 lbs of turkey breast, 156 lbs of turkey thighs, and 291 lbs of beef top sirloin.   Oh, and we can't forget about the veggies - 200 lbs of carrots, 100 lbs parsnips, and 100 lbs of turnips.  What a week!

Stuffing muffins!  Perfectly portioned for large quantity orders, and they're just so cute!

Getting it there piping hot is certainly not a problem for us, we loaded trays straight from the oven into thermal Cambro boxes to arrive ready to serve.  A big thank you to ABC Rentals in Kitchener for having some extra boxes available, we were four boxes short and they came to the rescue!

Thank you to ATS Automation and Dare Foods Limited for choosing Select Service for your holiday catering!  We look forward to working with you again next year!

Curious about our Party in a Box? Take a closer look at one of our holiday orders!

What's a Party in a Box you say?  The cost effective way to have gourmet appetizers for your next party without any of the work or the freezer-burnt boxed apps you're used to seeing at the grocery store.  We make all of our 200+ different canapes fresh from scratch, and you get the exact same selection that you would see if Select was catering a full-service cocktail reception at your home.  Chose your own items to make up a full selection of hors d'oeuvres to serve to your guests, either as a meal replacement (who doesn't love appetizers for dinner?) or for a few quick nibbles before a full meal.

Below are some candid shots of an order we catered on Saturday December 10 for 20 guests.  The hostess ordered 6 different items, 20 pieces of each.  All of our canapes range in price from $1.29 per piece to $3.25 per piece, with most items coming in around the mid-range ($1.50 to $1.95 per piece).  The order shown here was less than $13 per person, including HST and delivery.

The finished chilled items, ready to unwrap and serve.  On the left are our signature fresh spring rolls with sweet chili dip, and on the right are our new smoked salmon lollipops 

Close up of the smoked salmon lollipops, new for Holiday 2011.  The sticks are included to complete the authentic lollipop experience. 

The items that need to be served hot are delivered in recyclable aluminum foil trays, ready to unwrap and toss in the oven.  Items like the pork skewers pictures above are marinated and raw, and need to be cooked in your oven before serving, while other items (like the pulled pork tarts picture below) are fully cooked and just need to be heated through. 

 The finished order, exactly as you would receive it.  We re-use and recycle whenever we can (we go through a lot of boxes!) so your order will be packed into a box for easy delivery.  All of the sauces, glazes, and dips will be included with your order.  Depending on which items you select, some things require some light assembly.