After Christmas season, I can easily say, hands down, my next favorite season is Oscar season. Not just for the reasons one might think. Yes, I love seeing what all the stars are wearing, making fun of the host and the sometimes inebriated starlets and getting nervous as they open that envelope to announce the winner as if I had some personal stake in it but it is actually for the food. From that first year in my Santa Monica apartment when I took four baguettes, hollowed them out and laid them end to end across my table filled with spinach dip for “The Green Mile”, I knew my food pun destiny.
Over the years it has evolved, mainly due to the introduction (to me at least) of Photoshop in 2006. Prior to that I would type up signs that read Multiple Layered Personality Dip for “A Beautiful Mind” or Crouching Tiger Prawns with Hidden Dragon Sauce. I think you can all guess the movie.
However, when I started turning the movie posters into menu boards, it became serious business. I will admit that I don’t always come up with all the menu items, my regular Oscar party girls and my husband help out with ideas. But I always do the posters. Here is a slideshow of a few favorites from previous years.
We always have some pretty fun ideas and I think this year was no exception. Here is a sampling of our menu.
Almond Kalenina – kale, date, parmesan and almond salad
Beets of the Southern Wild – arugula and beet salad
D’Mango – a delicious mango cocktail as well as a Coeur a la Crème with mango chutney
Escargot – while I didn’t serve some Iranian snail dish, I did make spinach and cheese pinwheels in the shape of a snail
King’s Toast Points Bruschetta – self explanatory
Hitchcrock starring Artichoke Hopkins & Helen Mozzarella – artichoke mozzarella dip in a crockpot
Life of Pie – while I admit, this was an easy one to come up with along with Zero Dark Chocolate, my friend Jenny made an amazing samosa pie in keeping with the theme of the movie
The Schezwan – Sweet and spicy schezwan turkey meatballs. I will not describe the form my friend Vickie chose to shape them since she wanted to keep with the theme of this movie as well, but considering “The Sessions” was about a sex surrogate I think you all get the picture.
Snow White Cupcakes and the Bundtman – White cupcakes from Sprinkles and a homemade caramel bundt cake.
And of course, every year we must have our wine section:
Wreck it Roquefort: When The Game Is Over, The Fig Begins. Coming to Crackers in 3D
or
Fig & Blue Cheese Savouries
Click the above link for the recipe from Epicurious from The Food 52 Cookbook Volume 2 (and make sure to visit Food52 as well. It is one of my favorite culinary websites)
A few suggestions for the recipe:
For step 3, I didn’t have a small enough cutter so I cleaned out an old prescription bottle and used that. It worked perfectly.
For step 4, I highly suggest using a pastry bag with a small round tip for filling if you have one. Trying to scoop out the fig jam from a ¼ teaspoon was really difficult.
So while the menus and puns change over the years, one thing always stays the same: George Clooney is hot, and so are these … (insert just-from-the-oven item here)
Sundays at Lark 