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.