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.