It’s time once again to think about what Oscar party food you can offer that honors each of this year’s Best Picture nominees!
“Hugo” takes place in Paris, France. The title character steals baguettes and croissants from the baker in the square to survive. Therefore, the food that might best represent “Hugo” (other than a round moon-decorated cake with a big cardboard rocket stuck vertically through its eye), would be baguettes and croissants (I’m linking Julia Child’s own fabulous recipe).
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” takes place in New York City. There aren’t a lot of food references in the film, but, Max von Sydow is shown enjoying a New York hot dog. Therefore, you might want to serve hot dogs New York-style with a tasty, low-cholesterol garnish from Food.com; New York strip steak appetizers, or brew up a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea.
You can’t go wrong with luau food at this year’s Oscar party, because “The Descendants” takes place in Hawaii. This is, quite frankly, the most exciting culinary situation to hit Oscar parties in years! Conjure up some Hawaiian-style spare ribs, potato-crab salad, and ahi tuna. Add to the dessert table with Hawaiian dessert squares. The drinkers among you can enjoy a mai tai or a mango daiquiri.
“Moneyball” is a baseball movie, so be sure to have “peanuts and Cracker Jacks” on hand. It would be criminal of me not to mention Alton Brown’s own pretzel recipe. How about making some sugar cookies, decorated like little baseballs?
“War Horse” is a more difficult proposition. The FDA did recently rule that horse meat can be used for human consumption, but I am not suggesting that we actually eat the War Horse. After everything he’s survived, that would just be wrong. Perhaps the best way to honor this film (other than buying some MREs from the military surplus store) would be to serve something with apples and something with carrots. Apples and carrots are tasty treats for both horses and people!
For “The Help,” definitely DO NOT make “chocolate cake with a special ingredient.” Find some greatness in the annals of Southern cooking, like one of my favorite party recipes of all time, AllRecipe’s “Southern Made Cheese Ball,” which is so good my kids will eat the leftovers with a fork for lunch. Perhaps you could make some Southern fried cabbage, tea cakes, barbecued chicken, or mini peach cobblers. I don’t like Paula Deen all that much, but I truly have no complaints about a recipe for Southern Comfort Punch.
“The Artist” is a film about America, and film, in the 1920s. Some research into American food habits in the ’20s revealed that the pineapple upside-down cake was invented during that decade. Perhaps serve egg creams or fried ravioli, both delicacies of the decade. It might be fun to turn the beverage table at your party into a speakeasy and require a password: Prohibition was in force during the time period of “The Artist,” and that’s the only way people could have drinks.
With its frustrating lack of narrative, “Tree of Life” is undoubtedly the most difficult of this year’s Best Picture nominees to interpret using food. You might create a dish using leaves, such as stuffed grape leaves, a broccoli dish, or stuffed cabbage, or choose to go completely abstract (kind of like the film itself) and pay tribute to the movie’ss colorful image montages by cubing up several colors and flavors of Jell-O, and mixing the cubes together in the same bowl.
“Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen’s exquisite picture, shows Owen Wilson being magically transported into the Jazz Age and interacting with F. Scott Fitzgerald and several other famous artists of that time period. There are several online recipes created to represent “The Great Gatsby,” such as crab-stuffed parmesan mushrooms (an Oscar party favorite of mine, no matter what is nominated!), or check out this awesome list of Great Gatsby Foods from FoodTimeline.org. A totally different direction one might go with this film is French, seeing that it takes place in Paris; perhaps throw in a baked brie appetizer, some French wine, or some mini-quiches. (Note that your “Gatsby” food can double as food honoring “The Artist,” and your French selections can double as food honoring “Hugo.”)
Wherever and however you celebrate this year’s Oscars (and the return of Billy Crystal), bon appetit!
(Special thanks to Garrick Saito for his broccoli suggestion!)