THE QUEEN OF THE CANAPE
FACTORY
BYLINE: JAN NORRIS -
If you've fingered a nibble from a cocktail tray in
Zecchino, 77, is the queen of canapés, the godmother of gourmet hors d'oeuvres. She runs Holiday Foods, a multimillion-dollar factory that churns out hundreds of thousands of beautiful finger foods every week.
So her name's not familiar. But you've likely eaten her mini-beef
"We sell to distributors, all the upscale hotels like The Breakers in
You'll find her foods in
"I had a distributor who sold to the White House at one point, when
In the factory that faces railroad tracks in a warehouse district in east
How she got her
start
It was trial by fire.
She was a widowed restaurant owner in the early '80s who made hors d'oeuvres on the side for in-house parties, and some for friends. "I love to entertain," she said.
One night, after one of her parties, the catering manager from the
Diplomat Hotel in
"He wanted crab-filled wontons. I thought, 'Sure. I can do those,' “Zecchino said.
"I asked how many. He said 3,000. I had to catch a chair!" she said. "Right away, I turned him down. I was doing everything on my own, and the most I'd ever done of anything was 200 - maybe."
She thought it over, though, and asked her daughter and a friend for help. They agreed, and she called the manager back. "I committed myself to do it, and that means I had to do it. That was what pushed me," she said. Her deadline was in two days.
"I had no plan. I had to go shopping - fast. I had to find crabmeat - a lot of it - in a hurry. I bought up all the wonton wrappers in all the stores. I had to buy a table deep-fryer. I had been frying them in little batches on the stove - well, you can't do 3,000 six or seven at a time. Then I had to find boxes enough to pack 3,000 in so they didn't get crushed.
"It was crazy," she said, laughing. "We had everyone in here working very late at night, cutting cabbage, mixing, filling and closing them, and frying and frying. It was like an episode of I Love Lucy."
But she pulled it off. The chef liked her work, and requested more. Then, other chefs and caterers heard about her, and her business was on its way.
She offered only 10 or 15 items at first - popular bites like the wontons, Rumaki - chicken livers and a water chestnut slice wrapped in bacon, and Spanakopita - phyllo triangles filled with spinach and cheese.
Today, her menu list contains more than 300 hot and cold items, and she'll make custom canapés to order. She sells wholesale to distributors and retail to consumers via the company Web site (www.holidayfoods.com).
Her inspiration
She gets her food ideas from magazines and cookbooks and watching TV. "There's a lot of creativity there that I see," she said. "And today, there is more weight put on presentation, too."
She has a full-time chef, Dan Kucera, who works with her to develop recipes and handle quality control. He was a banquet chef at the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort and worked for a number of other Marriotts before Zecchino offered him a job. "I thought about it for 10 seconds," he said, "and said yes."
Up to three new items are designed every week, he said, though not all will make it to the menu. One of the latest successes is a risotto and Gorgonzola cheese croquette. "It's killer," he said.
Another new favorite is the mini Monte Cristo, a Swiss cheese-Danish ham-turkey breast "sandwich" made up in a puff pastry triangle.
Knowing what flavors will sell and how to mix them is tricky, however. "It's a gift," her daughter, Linda Zecchino, said. She runs the business and marketing arm of the factory. "I can't do it, but my mom can taste these things before she puts them together and just comes up with really tasty foods."
They range from
Mediterranean items like asparagus
Her most famous food is the mini-beef
"I was cooking a real beef Wellington at home, and wondered how this would be in miniature. It turned out just great, and people just loved them.
"Anything you can do big, you can do small," Zecchino said. Her formula has led to mini eggplant Parmesans, and two-bite Philly cheese steaks en croute.
"We use Cheez Whiz, and sauté the onions and peppers, and use paper-thin beef loin, then wrap it in puff pastry. It's very popular. That's a new item for us," Zecchino says.
How she does it
But making miniatures is a huge hands-on, labor-intensive undertaking. The only machines at the factory are large mixers for making fillings and mousses, and a shrink-wrap machine to enclose the finished boxes.
The cooking of fillings, wrapping crusts and pastries, piping perfect mousses and packing individual canapes - is all done by workers, assembly-line fashion. A tour of the immaculate factory begins with hairnets and chef coats for all. "You have to remove all jewelry, too. We have awards for our sanitation," Zecchino said. The plant is inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and they show up unannounced, so it's kept clean at all times.
In several chilly workrooms, workers were busy at dozens of stainless steel tables. Plastic tubs were lined up in front of them; doughs stacked neatly to one side. One by one, the tiny foods were created by assembling the foods, then lining them neatly on sheet pans that filled speed racks. They would then be wheeled to the freezers, and packed, frozen, for shipping.
In the first room, 10 workers were making mini-mushroom quiches. Several workers patted pastry crust circles into mini-muffin pans - the same type that home cooks use.
The pans were shoved over to other workers, who scooped a spoonful of duxelle, a mix of wild mushrooms, onions and herbs, into the cups. The workers used a squeeze bottle filled with the egg and milk mixture to fill each cup. A garnish of three or four tiny pieces of red pepper was added and the pans slid onto the conveyor-belt ovens. Workers at the other end of the oven used a wooden pick to loosen the quiches from the pans. They were then placed on the trays and sent to the freezer. Dozens of empty pans were moving from the oven area to the filling table, over and over. More than 10,000 little quiches would be churned out before the workday was up.
In the meat room, where raw meats are used for fillings, three workers at one table were making beef and cheese "firecrackers." A piece of chili-spiced raw beef was placed on an egg roll wrapper. A piece of cheddar cheese was added and the wrapper was rolled up and sealed. It took three seconds for each.
"It's so simple," Zecchino said. "You just do it 99 more times for a boxful."
At another table, workers were stuffing shrimp into small phyllo purses - so named because they resemble a woman's drawstring-cinched purse. A circle of phyllo pastry was set out and a shrimp, already marinated and cut to size, was placed on the dough. The dough was gathered in a smooth motion and crimped at the top to seal. Four seconds each.
"The workers are all cross-trained, so they can make any of the foods, depending on the orders we have to fill," Zecchino said.
A speed rack on one side of the room held small hot dogs on sticks.
"Those will be what we call 'Franks a la
They're neither kosher nor modern - they're throwbacks to the '50s party circuits, Zecchino said. But as one of her most-ordered items, "I can't take them off the list. People just love these, especially at kids' parties."
Workers at another table were trimming chicken breast pieces for
Rumaki assemblers were fishing in giant tubs of chicken livers and quickly wrapping them with a chestnut and bacon slice. "We'll use 200 to 300 pounds of of livers per batch," Zecchino said. Each "batch" is 1,000 pieces.
Tiny cornucopia shapes were being formed from flour tortillas at one table where two workers trimmed the dough rounds into quarters, then used a template to recut them for the horn shape. Flour and water mixed together formed the glue that held these into the tiny horns. They would be filled with smoked chicken and cheese.
Brand-name products were scattered throughout the kitchens: Lenders makes the mini-bagels for the tiny bagelette pizzas. Pillsbury makes the puff pastry dough.
"We use quality products," Zecchino said. "Consistency is key, and we need consistency."
In the last kitchen area is the canape assembly room. Here, the cold foods, typically mousses and soft cheese mixtures, are piped attractively onto vegetable rounds or into tiny phyllo cups. They're one-bite foods, and set up for color as well as a burst of flavor in the mouth, Zecchino said.
Lisa (Ming) Chen, a garde-manger chef from
The final piece of the factory is the packing room, where custom-made white boxes for the foods are assembled and filled with the beautiful creations, like fine candies set like little jewels in their individual spaces.
Even here, the details set Zecchino's operation apart: Special spacers are added to the boxes in the corners and on the sides, so the pieces are protected from crushing.
"Our customers tell us they're so beautiful when they open the boxes, they don't want to eat them." Zecchino said.
But eat them, they do. Zecchino will do more than $10 million in business this year. Not bad selling canapés and hors d'oeuvres that range from 25 cents to $1 each for most. Lobster medallions with pate can run up to $1.50 and custom items can cost up to $3 each, she said, but those are exceptions.
Right now, the factory's gearing up for overtime, working to catch up to all the holiday parties rescheduled from the hurricanes, and those that were planned up to a year ago.
So does she ever run into her own foods at parties around town? Zecchino laughed. "We never get invited. The food goes alone."
jan_norris@pbpost.com
Where to buy canapés
There is no retail outlet for Holiday Foods' products, but you can go
online to order boxes of their frozen canapes or hors
d'oeuvres. They'll either FedEx them to you, or you can go to the factory in
There are more than 300 items to choose from; below is just a sample of some of their items.
Note that there's a minimum of 50 to 100 items per purchase, but they sell assortment boxes with a variety of tidbits, packed 100 to a box. Prices for the assortments begin at $42 (shipping is extra).
- Brie with raspberries, in puff pastry pouch: $44 per 50 pieces.
-
- Monte Cristo en croute: $31.50 for 50 pieces.
- Franks a la
- Mini beef Wellington: $46.50 for 50 pieces.
- Philly cheese steak en croute: $70 for 100 pieces.
- Chicken and Andouille sausage mini strudel: $88 for 100 pieces.
- Eggplant Parmesan 'dumpling': $28.50 for 50 pieces.
- Rumaki: $44 for 50 pieces.
For ordering information, go to their Web site, www.holidayfoods.com or call (954) 921-7786 to order a catalog.
Canapés of yore
The hors d'oeuvres that time forgot. Remember those '50s and '60s finger foods that made all the rounds of cocktail parties. We bet you wouldn't turn them down, even if you snicker at them.
Emilia Zecchino of Holiday Foods says there are some she can't remove from her repertoire, like the spanakopita and pigs in a blanket, because of their popularity.
Remember these?
- Pigs in a blanket: hot dogs, wrapped in crescent rolls, and sliced into small pieces. Baked, and served with mustard for dipping.
- Rumaki: chicken livers and a water chestnut slice wrapped in bacon; broiled.
- Spanakopita: phyllo dough triangles filled with spinach, onion and cheese
- Ham and cheese pinwheels: ham, mustard and cheese wrapped into crustless bread slice and then sliced into pinwheels.
- Meatballs in grape jelly: Ground beef, the size of large marbles, cooked in a sauce made of a small jar of grape jelly mixed with a jar of chili sauce.
- Angels on horseback: Shucked oysters, sprinkled with herbs and wrapped in bacon, then broiled.
- Shrimp toast: Shrimp, sherry and spices mixed into a pate, spread on quartered bread slices, brushed with beaten egg, and baked or fried.
Hors d'oeuvre-making tips
Here are tips gleaned after watching the Holiday Foods workers:
Equipment
Pastry bags: Fill with mousse or stiff filling and pipe into the cups or onto a vegetable round.
Squeeze bottle: Put liquid quiche-like mixtures or melted jellies in these, to fill small pastry cups in a flash without spilling.
Assembly
Set out all the dough’s, crackers or vegetable rounds at once. Have them spread out on the sheets on which they'll bake. Fill them all next, then finish wrapping or garnishing in the final part. The assembly line work goes faster if you're well organized and spread out to work efficiently.
At this point, you can freeze the assembled canapés on their baking pans, then repack them into tins or freezer bags. You then can remove as many as needed to bake fresh for party time.
Display:
Mix shapes and colors on trays. However, keep hot foods separated from the cold ones, and sweets separated from savories.
Don't overfill trays or plates. Space rows and columns neatly for a sharp-looking tray. Garnish the tray with only one item - and make sure it's edible.
Most of the foods should be two-bite size. Don't make giant pieces that are difficult to manage or require silverware; a drink will likely be in the guest's other hand.
For those items that are "dippable," put them on sturdy picks, then have a place for disposal of the picks and/or napkins. Place the dip on the same tray as the food, not next to it where diners might miss it.
Note: Instruct every waiter as to the ingredients of the foods, or place labels next to them if set out buffet-fashion. If nuts or shellfish are in any part of the food, make sure the diners are aware - many are allergic to these foods and should be told they're included.
How many to serve?
If only hot and cold hors d'oeuvres are to be served, allow
at least
If your cocktail hour will be followed by a formal or buffet dinner, allow four to eight hors d'oeuvres per person.
By the numbers
12 to 15:
Number of hors d'oeuvres a worker can make in 1 minute by hand.
25 cents:
Minimum cost of each canapé
$10 million:
The amount Holiday Foods will earn this year.