Film Feasts Project

Hello!

Apparently I got bored of making fun of blogs three years ago. Instead I have decided to write about how astoundingly greedy I am in the hope that it will act as a kind of therapeutic mirror, preventing my otherwise inevitable obesity and premature death. Or perhaps it will be a catalyst as the process of writing about food turns me into a complete obsessive. Either way...

This project is based on films that make me hungry. The aim is to watch a film and simultaneously eat the foodstuffs most satisfying in the context of the movie. This was originally inspired by watching Empire of the Sun with my brother, and realising that although it is by itself a brilliant film, it is greatly enhanced with the addition of a large, greasy meal of meaty noodle soup and fried gyoza. The idea was compounded after watching Grave of the Fireflies (eating sushi and tonkatsu whilst two children starve to death in post-war Japan :D); and much later, Ratatouille (eating a baguette with lots French butter and cheese whilst a rat teaches us valuable moral lessons).

This is not unlike enhancing a quality fillet of steak with a beautiful glass of Malbec. In fact it is identical to the erudite practice of wine pairing. Just as the POWs in Empire of the Sun are craving the food you are gorging yourself upon, so the bloody sinews of the steak are bolstered by the ample tannins of the wine, forming a tender mycelium of pleasure (incidentally I can't write about wine as poetically as I can drink it).

In the first film of the project (I might return to the aforementioned formative films later), I will extend this idea to an astounding tripling - of film, feast and fine wine, in Gianni Di Gregorio's -

Pranzo Di Ferragosto
servito con pasta (e carichi di vino bianco) or
Mid-August Lunch, served with pasta (and loads of white wine)


This film is beautiful and features a large helping of comedy, sweetness and hot Roman summer. Whilst you would do well to follow the dishes from the film, such as baked pasta or filetti di persico con patate, it is a lot of food (although...they do talk about baked pasta a lot). I opted for a light pasta dish adapted from a Cordon Bleu recipe, with several glasses of a powerful Ardèche Chardonnay (a wine I would never normally drink, but this one is very far off the usual watery joke people bring to parties). The main character Gianni, who is also the writer and director, is rarely seen without a glass of Chablis in hand - it is quite enjoyable to drink along with him. I actually wandered into this film tripling inadvertently on the 15th August. What luck! What an excellent way to spend an afternoon.

Pasta with prosciutto and Parmesan
Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil
400g Pennoni (or Farfalle if you prefer)
1 large onion, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
200g chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced
3 courgettes, cut into batons
150g Prosciutto, roughtly torn
300ml crème fraîche
100g Parmesan
Fresh Basil

1. Cook the pasta al dente so that you are draining it as the sauce is ready.
2. Heat oil in a large pan over a high heat, and fry all the vegetables until lightly coloured, 3-4 minutes. Add the prosciutto and fry for a further 3 minutes. Stir in crème fraîche and heat through, add parmesan, black pepper and a little salt.
3. Add pasta and heat through, stir in roughly torn basil and serve immediately.

Try and eat some slices of good quality mortadella at the same time.

Writing this has made me absolutely starving.

Transistors and beauty

Oh, dearest readers (I assume there is at least one, being myself, or a certain stalker of mine), I have neglected this idea terribly. My first post was full of hope and ridicule, but just one post can surely never be enough to satisfy your ravenous tastes. Perhaps I should look to the initial example that inspired this project; no doubt it will infuse me with exhilaration and encouragement.

I must confess that I am terribly impressed, in fact, in awe, that it has remained of such high quality. This paragraph was especially entertaining

"Yes, she would make jars full of strawberry jam; her only preserve against the faint ridiculousness that wafted about her, alongside the billows of delusions and projections; her only preserve, and here she smirked at the pun, and here she sealed the lids on her jam jars and made fiddly labels and displayed them in artfully rustic arrangements (yes, she thought, she was beginning to grasp this ‘country’ aesthetic)."

A third person narrative? What ingenuity is this? I am humbled and ashamed.

So, with renewed vigour, I shall continue to explore my soul. What cloying sagacity has filled my days of late? What supreme command over the self and psyche allows me to penetrate the deepest of my own thoughts? I shall tell you.

First - a happy loneliness, that is endured with surprising ease as I imagine the sweetness of reuniting. But this perhaps is untrue. I feel it is tinged with laziness or perhaps a kind of subconscious preparation for the future. Either way, I have felt energized to do and be more, rather than being content with remaining stationary for an entire day, without a thought to interrupt my felicity. I would maintain that this state is neither better nor worse, simply different. Replacing affection with efficiency.

Second - new films. I finally managed to attend a members' screening at the ICA of Mon-Rak Transistor, a Thai film that was somewhere between slapstick and tragedy; romance and musical. It was an enjoyable film, with very pretty actors and an almost soap-opera style. The lead, Pan, always had an inexplicable and impertinent smile on his face, which faded as the film went on.

A sad ending

The Lives of Others came in the post, as did Céline et Julie vont en bateau. That was 193 minutes of pure melodramatic mystery and delicacy. The Lives of Others was sad, but it didn't make me cry, unlike a certain other animated film that shall remain nameless. I must set aside some time to watch the Luis Buñuel film my brother sent, but I find it so difficult to sit still.

I am now hungry, so I will make some rice pudding or use one of those cookie recipes from the wives of the U.S. presidents. I will try my best to return soon.
Only after I have made some jam in the third person, bien sur.

A New Hope

Surely by publicly reflecting on one's life one will automatically make it far more fascinating. Unfortunately the capacities of 'Live Journal' were not adequate to expose myself to the proper degree. And to expose myself is most definitely my object.

Today I awoke with a burgeoning sickness that may or may not be related to the 17 bottles of inexplicably chilled red wine I consumed last night. In an effort to alleviate these ills I made the enlightened decision to wander around Brick Lane covered in a film of sweat and surrounded by food I had no currency to exchange for. I spent some time wallowing in the back of an deserted, minimalist café; so minimalist in fact that they served boiling hot lemongrass tea in glasses unencumbered with the frivolity of a handle, reducing the utilitarian value to nought. I did not order anything, but secretly consumed a bagel from a brown paper bag.

The bagel was filled with egg mayonnaise. This is a misleading notion, as all mayonnaise is of course made with egg. I cannot understand or trust people who dislike this essential sandwich filler. It fills me with perturbation akin to that of Haddon's autistic Christopher Boone's mistrust of people who hate dogs, which I of course share. Such people sicken me.

After my long and perturbing day, I was feeling rather perturbed indeed. Feeling fairly ill and highly perturbed, I could only catch the train back to Baker Street and perturb myself home. I walked shakily towards Marylebone, smoking in a perturbed and shaky manner, knowing nothing but my exhaustion and perturbation, and with a few small stops to buy popcorn and to inquire at The Screen about cinema tickets for that evening. I decided, that in my pertubed state, I would like nothing better than to sit in the dark, watching something non-perturbing, for an hour and a half or thereabouts, eating sugary snack food not purchased from the venue, attempting not to perturb the other patrons with my crunching. My brother's friend was sitting at the box office reading a book. I told her I thought she had better get back to work. She did not laugh but rather gave me a silent look. To fill the silence, I asked about SatC tickets. I said I would return at about 8.40pm, or possibly slightly later. I do not believe she was very perturbed by my impromtu visit. After all, it is a place of business, not her home.

I must say the film was much ameliorated by the charming scene where Charlotte inadvertantly shits herself in Mexico.