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The culinary version of the Italian flag

The picture shows the first course Veggie Chick and I sent out at our first catering gig last night. It's three kinds of dips - (from left) marinated tomato, chickpea and yoghurt, and green pea with cheese. Since the culinary theme was Italian food, VC came up with the brilliant idea of copying the colours of Il Tricolore. The crisps as the top of the picture aren't Italian though - we briefly toasted Iranian flat bread and then broke them into shards. In food, we can take liberties as long as it tastes good, don't you agree?

In all the excitement, I forgot to photograph the rest of the food before sending it out (but my partner did, so go to her blog to see what we made), which irks me because I just figured out how to change the camera settings to take indoor shots!

After the dips came spaghetti and chicken meatballs in a tomato sauce, followed by a number of appetizers (this was a sort of a cocktail party, by the way, but we decided to include a main course). Here's what we served:

• Roasted sweet onion and yellow pepper crostini;
• Marinated red pepper crostini;
• Tuna puffs (in choux pastry); and
• Falafel (again, not very Italian, but those chickpea balls went down well with the guests).

To end the meal, there were mocha truffles, similar to the kind I wrote about some time ago, only this time, instead of using leftover store-bought cake, this was homemade using an easy brownie recipe with a little coffee extract added and it was much cheaper too - we were, after all, working on a tight budget. (You know, Veggie Chick's blog is called NoDessert, but I saw her sneaking one of these little bites at the end of the night!)

She and I wanted to start a small catering venture after reading about pop-up restaurants and because we love to cook. It is an interesting concept and for much less than a visit to a real eatery, one can get a good meal even if it's not by a Michelin-starred chef, and homemade at that.

I came home after the party dead tired, but the whole experience was enjoyable and we learned a thing or two about organisation - the food preparation is probably the easiest part of the whole venture. All the way home, I was thinking of all the food themes we could do. A host of appetizers are great, but it would also be interesting to make a three course meal as well. Hopefully, we get more clients, because - and I think I speak for Veggie Chick as well - we're hooked!