I have to admit that this blog was for a college Persuasive Writing class and that class has come to an end. I have really enjoyed finding and making new recipes and giving tribute to some of my favorite flicks. Thank you for anyone who has visited my blog and I also thank all the people who wrote the recipes. Each of them was delicious! 

You're a mean one......

'Tis the Christmas season and let the Christmas movie marathons begin. From ABC Family's 25 Days 'Till Christmas to Hallmark's relentless barrage of Christmas-themed movies, the choices are endless. A favorite film in our family is the 1966 animated adaption of Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas. We loved singing along to the nonsensical genius of Thurl Ravenscroft's ballad "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" as kids and we watched and/or read the book every Christmas. I was pleased to the see the tradition being passed on to my nieces and that this little gem of film will be remembered by generations to come. 

Part of the magic and appeal of a Dr. Seuss story is how he effortlessly creates new words or terms that seem to make sense to us in context as we read the story. What exactly is a grinch, for example? One of Grinch's greatest crimes when attempting to steal Christmas was that he stole everything, even the last can of Who Hash. As we only see the can of the Who Hash in the film, it is open to interpretation on what the food consists of. My roommate's family perceived is at corn beef which they referred to as Who Hash. As I surfed the Internet, I found a tempting recipe that interpreted it as hash browns with ham and peppers. I found the recipe at http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/lumberjack-hash-recipe-mr1210. The recipe is titled "Lumberjack Hash" but I don't think any lumberjacks will be offended if we give the recipe credit to the Who's in Whoville. 

I first chopped up the onions and peppers and minced the garlic.

I then cooked them in a skillet over medium heat and poured on the hash browns. I used frozen hash browns and I was a little startled when I poured them in the pan. They had an uncanny resemblance to mozzarella cheese and I was really attempted to taste a couple. I refrained myself however and let them cook to a golden brown. 

I'm frying cheese, baby!

Alright,I'm just melting cheese on top of hash browns. 

The Grinch better lay off my who hash! Merry Christmas to all. 

Soylent Green is people!

I thought that no blog dedicated to great food from great movies would be complete to one of the most notorious cinematic delights of them all: Soylent Green. If you have not seen this movie, I apologize because the title of this post is a HUGE spoiler alert. Nonetheless, I would recommend to still watch the film. 

A 1973 sci-fi cult classic starring Hollywood legend Charlton Heston, Soylent Green is a film set in the dystopian future where much of the Earth's natural resources has been depleted. Grocery stores and the wide array of foods found in them is no longer available and the population survives on nondescript green cube rations of "soylent green" The ration is a much improved version of the previously sold "soylent yellow" and "soylent red". 

The film contains one the greatest and most disturbing twists and surprises which I believe makes the entire film worthwhile. If you can't guess what the twist is from the title of the post, all the better for when you actually watch the movie. The film inspired me to strike against any mysterious cafeteria food served to me in middle and high school yelling, "This meatloaf is people"! It also made me second guess eating spinach or anything green for weeks after. The film itself is an interesting concept on what length's man will do to survive or make a profit. I, unfortunately, did not want to attempt to recreate the soylent green recipe for reasons I hope most of my readers will understand. 

Scrumdiddlyumptious

When I was a kid, there was one thing that I feared even greater then the boogie man or having to clean my room. It was the ghastly tunnel scene from the 1971 cult classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That scene and Willy Wonka's creepy ballad which is featured in it haunted my dreams for years well into my adult life. I, however, loved the rest of the film if I just fastforwarded through that blasted scene. I am not the only one, by the way, who was freaked out about the tunnel scene. It was voted as the #74th Scariest Movie Moment by Bravo.

A fear of tunnels is not the only phobia one might develop after watching the movie. One might also develop chiclephobia, or the fear of chewing gum. That is because one might be afraid of becoming a giant oversized blueberry if they do. In the film, the precocious Violet insists on trying a piece of experimental gum and, although she first enjoys the multitude of flavors, she soon discoveres that she has ballooned into a giant blueberry. The oompa loompas roll her away and she has proven herself unworthy as the heir to the chocolate factory.

To celebrate this odd scene, I made a blueberry pie as a tribute to the still reigning queen of blueberries. I found the recipe at http://www.delish.com/recipefinder/blueberry-cream-pie?click=recipe_sr. The recipe included making a custard of sorts to serve as the base beneath a blueberry sauce. It was basically like vanilla pudding.

 

 

I then made the blueberry topping. I would suggest on decreasing the amount of blueberries used. My apartment was overflowing in blueberries.

 

I tried to stuff all the blueberries on top of the custard which was on a graham cracker pie crust. The blueberries came gushing forth and all over the counter. Although at first dismayed, I was pleasantly surprised to find I made a homemade Rorschach inkblot test.

What do you see in this picture? Please, be honest.

 

 

I then had to refrigerate the pie for about 3 hours. I wanted to transport the pie to my grandparents' for Thanksgiving, but the blueberry sauce would not cooperate and refused not to leak. I found this out by setting the pie on my car to open the door and looking up to see blueberry sauce slowly crawl down my car's rooftop. It was a perfect moment for oompa loompas to jump up and sing me a song about not trying to transport blueberry pie.

Despite having worse bladder control than a toddler, the pie was pretty tasty.

 

 

 Here's hoping on finding a golden ticket inside! Hey, someone might have slipped one in............

Peeta Bread

While reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, one thought kept crossing my mind: how are they going to portray this in the movie? With a book franchise as wildly popular as The Hunger Games trilogy, it was only a matter of time before it joined the likes of the Twilight series and become a major movie event.

The movie did not disappoint. The film set opening-day and single-day box office records and continued to become the thirteenth highest grossing film in North America. When a series has such a strong fan base as The Hunger Games does, it is only expected that fans will be in an uproar if even the slightest detail is changed during the transition from book to film. I felt that the movie was faithful enough to the original while still appropriately adapting itself to suit the new medium. Additionally, when the author of the series herself helps write the film adaptation, there is no greater stamp of approval.

Just as millions of tween girls have engaged in war over supporting Team Jacob or Edward, those same girls duked it over cheering for Peeta or Gale. The inspiration for my next dish came from this torrid love triangle. Katniss and Peeta's first meeting was not necessarily one either wanted to remember. Katniess, starving and sitting exhausted in the rain, is noticed by Peeta as he is taking out the trash from his family's bakery. Feeling pity for the desperate girl, Peeta throws her some nut and raisin bread. This scene both foreshadowed the future romance between the two and Peeta's role in Katniss's life as the voice of kindness and charity.

I found a recipe for bread inspired by the movie at: http://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/peetas-raisin-nut-bakery-bread-recipe/1/ It was quick and easy as it promised. It took about an hour to prepare and then bake. I first mixed together the wet and dry ingredients in seperate bowls. The recipe called for a lot of applesauce which helped created an interesting butter, egg, and applesauce mixture.

 

 

I then mixed the dry and wet mixtures together and baked it for 45 minutes.

 

 

After the infallible toothpick test in the bread's center, it was ready to cool down and be enjoyed.

 

 

The bread definitely does not have the sweetest flavor and it certainly is not for any raisin haters, but it was decent and had a nice, hearty flavor. Hey, when you live in District 12, you take what you can get.

 

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Lord of the Onion Rings

For all those who have been following my blog since post one, I mentioned in that post that my favorite movies are all three of the the Lord of the Rings triology. Naturally, I had to dedicate at least one of my posts to those splendiferous films. Everything in those movies is pitch-perfect: the directing, the soundtrack, the acting, the special effects, the hobbits, etc. Most of all, I think they are the movies that truly epitomize the perennial battle between good and evil and good's inexorable triumph.

For my tribute to Lord of the Rings, it may appear to be a little of a stretch. For even those who have stubbornly refused to see the movies, they at least know that the plot centers around a small, golden ring. So, I decided that the food equivalent of the ring to rule them all would be a nice crispy onion ring. I actually got this idea from TBS's Dinner and a Movie website at http://www.tbs.com/stories/story/0,,212685%7C1268%7C0,00.html. Both rings are forged in steaming hot liquids, right?

First, I needed some onions. I got both yellow and white to see which would taste or work better and there was no difference. I soaked the onions in some buttermilk for about an hour.

 

 

The batter consisted of all-purpose flour, rice flour, paprika, and cayenne powder. After mixing these up, I tossed the rings in and they were ready to be forged in the depths of Mordor.

The eye of Sauron!

 

 

As I have still procrastinated buying a candy thermometer, it took a little experimentation to get the temperature right. At first, it wasn't hot enough and the onions looked pretty pathetic. But after putting the oil on full heat, the onions fried up quite nicely. They did not look the prettiest, but they actually tasted quite good.

 

As there is only one ring to rule them all, I had to rummage through my onion rings to find which one would fit the description.

My precious........

 

 

I however highly doubt that this ring would give me unnatural long life. It sure was tasty though.

Who wants to be a Slumdog Millionaire?

One of my favorite theatrical experiences was watching Slumdog Millionaire through my university's International Cinema program. The auditorium was so packed that I was standing in the back against the wall for the first 15 minutes or so of the movie. I felt like a pre-teen sneaking in the theatre to watch a PG-13 or R-rated and the thrill of this never-before-experienced feeling was strangely intoxicating enough that I didn't even mind standing. Plus, the movie being phenomenol also didn't hurt.

Luckily, someone got claustrophobic and left the theatre and I pounced on that empty seat like a shameless shopper on Black Friday. The greatest part of the experience was the massive audience participation during the film. We all gasped, laughed, and stood at the edge of our seats together and everyone was cheering and dancing a la Bollywood for the film's finale. I finally understood how the home DVD experience will never completely replace the magic of watching a movie on the big screen.

In honor of this indie sleeper hit, I decided to make Tandoori chicken, a popular Indian dish made from chicken and yogurt. The name Tandoori comes from the tandoor, a clay oven where the dish is traditionally cooked. My apartment lacking a tandoor, I cooked the chicken in a conventional American oven in an aluminum foil pan. I found the recipe at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/tandoori-chicken-10000000460924/.

As this is an Indian dish, the recipe calls for myriad of spices.

 

 

 

 

After mixing the spices and yogurt, it was time to marinate the chicken. Plan on making this the day before you want to eat it because it requires the marinated chicken to chill in the fridge for at least 8 hours.

 

 

The next day, all you have to do is place the chicken in an aluminum roasting pan and bake for 35 minutes.

As a warning, side effects of this recipe may include spontaneoulsy breaking out in Bollywood-esque dance moves. If this happens to you, relax and just go with it.




 

Bella Notte

Arguably one of the most romantic scenes in cinema, the classic spaghetti sequence in Walt Disney's 1995 animated feature The Lady and the Tramp was almost cut from the film. Walt Disney was concerned that the scene would not give a romantic effect to the audience and that the scene of dogs eating spaghetti would instead appear puerile. The animator Frank Thomos was intransigent, however, and animated the entire scene himself without the assistance of any lay-outs. As anyone who as seen the film can attest to, the result was a charming sequence that rivals anything seen in a chick flick or romantic comedy. It has inspired countless guys taking their dates to Italian restaurants in the hope that they will share a plate a spaghetti and have similar smooching results.

For my next dish, I will be trying to make, in the words of the Italian chef in the movie, "the best spaghetti in town". I found the recipe at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/sicilian-spaghetti-sauce-10000000426907/ and it had outstanding reviews. I have to say, the spaghetti lived up to the hype.

I started by cooking a mixture of lean ground beef and Italian sausage. I think I can never go back to having spaghetti without Italian sausage. It adds a lot of extra zing to the meal.

 

 

As a warning, the sauce takes like 3 hours to make. I was a little shocked myself but I guess you really get an authentic, slow-cooked flavor. Plus, if you really want to impress that special someone, what is the harm in going all out? Just plan to be around the stove for the next couple of hours to keep an eye on the sauce. Maybe you could set the mood and pop in The Lady and The Tramp while you wait.

 

 

When the sauce was finally ready, all that is left to do is boil some noodles and enjoy the best spaghetti in town. If stray dogs start approaching your house in droves, please be generous.

 

I am a member of the generation that grew up with a boy named Harry Potter. "When did you first hear about Harry Potter?" is a frequent question people of my generation ask each other as that moment defines a part of our collective cultural experience.  It seemed like none of us could wait for J.K Rowling to finally release the next installment in the series and we gobbled up the film adaptions as a way to extend the inevitable departure with the franchise. After the magnificient final film adaption was released last year, I suppose we recovering Harry Potter addicts are each finding our own ways to cope. For me, I decided to take a quick trip back to Hogsmeade with a nice, cool, alchoholic free glass of butterbeer.

I actually used the "official" recipe that Universal Studios allegedly uses at their Harry Potter village. I found the recipe at http://www.squidoo.com/universal-studios-orlando-harry-potter-butterbeer-recipe A friend of mine had tried the stuff at Studios and I asked her to compare mine with what she had at the park. Justifying the year interlude between tastings of both butterbeers as a way to plead uncertainty, she did say that it tasted as good as she remembered. It was indeed very tasty. and extremely frothy.


I first had to make a caramel like sauce over the stove. Cursing my reluctance to break down and buy a candy thermometer to make my life easier, I had to make an educated guess to know when the sauce was ready. Anyways, it's not like real wizards use candy thermometers, right? I guess they just use magic in these situations. Caramelo sauceo prepareo!

 

 

Then came the addition of the ingredient which gives the beverage its name. The recipe called for like an entire stick. I guess J.K Rowling never intended for the drink to ever be actually made and gave no thought to the drink's possible deleterious health risks. But hey, anything with this much butter has to be delicious. I began to wonder if perhaps Paula Deen was the one to bring the recipe to the world of Muggles.

 

 

After the sauce was done, I added it to some Cream Soda. It was pretty cool to watch the drink to become almost instananeously foamy. It was like a 5th grade science fair project.

 

 

 

 

Not bad for a Muggle.
 

It was interpreted as pro-life. It was equally interpreted as pro-choice. Some argue that it glamorized teenage pregnancy while others contend it simply humanized those who go through that ordeal. One thing that critics did seem to agree on about the 2007 film Juno is that it was definitely one funny movie. With her razor-sharp wit and near-perfect delivery, Juno MacGuff gave us some great one-liners. One of them in particular became the inspiration for the my next dish.

When expressing her love for her boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker, Juno made an analogy that is both offbeat and surprisingly sweet. She professes,"As far as boyfriends go, Paulie Bleeker is totally boss. He is the cheese to my macaroni." Eating plain macaroni can be good maybe if you were rescued from being stranded in a forest for weeks and that was the first meal that your rescuers offered you. It is  the cheese that really makes macaroni complete and delicious.

I got the recipe at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Four-Cheese-Macaroni/Detail.aspx. Although the recipe came highly reviewed, a lot of people made suggestions and/or alterations to the recipe. I stuck with the original recipe and it turned out well.

This recipe was great because it was really heavy on the cheese. Seriously, it called for like five different varieties. But, like my wise roommate pointed out, no one has ever complained about their macaroni and cheese being too cheesy. So, we grated the plethora of cheeses.

The recipe also called for some "cubed processed cheese food." I later learned that this is just the code name for Velveeta. It is like saying "bite-sized round chocolate pieces" for M & M's.

After baking for about 35 minutes, no square inch was left not buried by bubbling cheese goodness.

Mmmmm, nothing says I love you more than a nice ultra-cheese saturated plate of mac and cheese.

What else can be said about America's favorite family, the Simpsons? They have become a milestone in pop culture and are an American insitution. The show is a family favorite and I grew up learning everything I need to know about life from the Simpsons. One of those lessons is that the doughnut ranks as one of the greatest achievements of mankind. So, in honor of this ranking, I made doughnuts which I believe Homer Simpson would even be proud of.

I found the recipe at http://www.instructables.com/id/Krispy-Kreme-Donut-Doughnut-Recipe/. It was really user friendly and I wanted to take the challenge to see if they in fact rivaled my beloved confections from Krispy Kreme. In short, they did.

After making the dough, the funnest part of this recipe was making the doughnut shape. I had no doughnut cutter so I had to make the shapes by hand. My roommate, Matt, and I had a good time trying to come up with original donut designs. We were succesful in making a figure 8 shaped doughnut and a mini braided one which bore a similarity to challah.

 

 

 

I then had a wonderful cooking experience. Having never fried anything in oil before, I put the oil naively on the highest heat and left it for 5 or 7 minutes. The house was a smoker's lounge in minutes and we practically had to crawl around to get any breathable air. Slightly dejected, I went on to try to fry my first doughnut and created a great piece of charcoal instead.

 

 

I was beginning to think I took maybe too many life lessons from Homer. D'oh! Yet, also like Homer, nothing was going to stop me from getting delicious doughnuts! I tried again and came out with a much improved product.

 

Now that they were properly fried, you can't forget the glaze!

 

 

Homer could not have said it better: "Mmmmmm............doughnuts"

P.S. Shout out to my roommate Matt for his help!

 

 

Probably one of the greatest tributes to the culinary arts in recent memory, the film Ratatouille is the catalyst which begins my culinary adventure. Surprisingly, when talking with some of my friends about my plans for the first movie-inspired dish, more than a few learned that ratatouille was more than a movie. Ratatouille is a traditional French recipe originally hailing from Nice. For you French speakers out there, you will recognize the French verb touiller in the name. For the non-French speaking population, this means "to toss food".

Like many traditional foods such as borshct, there are a myriad of ways to cook ratatouille. It can be sauteed, baked, or boiled. The basic concept lies in combining a lot of vegetables together. The particular recipe which I used called to make ratatouille as a type of baked casserole with a tomato and garlic sauce. The recipe can be found at the following website:

www.saveur.com/gallery/Great-Recipes-From-Famous-Movies.   This recipe was ridiculously easy and was extremely tasty. Even reluctant vegetable haters who tried it were fans. Most of the work consisted in slicing the vegetables.

The adventure began at the grocery store in the produce section. This was the first time in my life where I have purchased a eggplant and I had no idea if there were any age old secrets on how to choose the right one. Luckily, having only one left at the store made this a simpler decision. I do think I have found a secret though. Pick an eggplant most resembling a human face.

Do you see it?

 

Coming home with the loot, I then preceded to chop away. My favorite part was hollowing the red pepper. It felt like every Halloween of my life.

 

A new Halloween tradition?

 

I then placed all the slices in a baking dish over a tomato based sauce. After 50 or so minutes in the oven, I was in traditional French provincial heaven.

Pre-baked

 

Baked

 

Voila! No master computer animated rat chef required! (though still welcome)

 

 

My first recipe turned out to be a delicious success. Coming up this next week: homemade doughnuts inspired by the doughnut king himself, Homer Simpson. Mmmm........doughnuts.

Welcome to Tasty Flicks! The purpose of this blog is to combine two of my personal passions: food and movies. I am on a mission to find the tastiest recipes from my favorite flicks. I like to think of the recipes that I will make as a culinary tribute to some of the silver screen's finest films. Or perhaps this will became a new way to enhance the movie experience. If you eat a dish found in a movie while watching it, you will feel like you are actually in the movie. It will be like having the 3-D experience at home, but a lot more affordable.

Here I am, all preperared to cook up a tasty flick.

 

I suppose a personal introduction is in order. My name is Matt Young and I am currently a college student at BYU in Provo, Utah. Favorite food? I enjoy pizza as much as the next college student but I would have to say Pulgoki, a traditional Korean meat dish. Favorite movie? I will cheat a little bit and say the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy. And yes, that would be referring to the approximately forever long director's extented cut.

I invite you to join me on my dual cinematic/culinary adventure. The recipe for this upcoming week: Ratatouille inspired from the eponymous film.