Your Culinary World

How the Academy Awards Celebrates the Best in Food and Film

It’s Oscar time! That means designer gowns, elaborate production numbers, red carpet interviews and seemingly endless ‘thank-you’ speeches in addition to those prized statuettes.

Also present will be the elegant food that no Oscar event can be without. This year Cheryl Cecchetto is designing and Wolfgang Puck is catering the elite after-the-awards Governors Ball.

This Ball is an insider's must with an A List that literally defines who's who's in Hollywood. Being omitted can easily declare a career is in decline.

So what will Chef Puck serve to the 1,500 invited VIPs of the Film Industry that will be attending this year’s party-of-the-year ball? Here’s his innovative (and health conscious) menu:

Appetizers

Bolognese-stuffed Rice Balls
Mini-burgers with Aged Cheddar and Remoulade
Spicy Tuna Tartare in a Sesame Miso Cone
Salmon on Flatbread Shaped like Oscar Statuettes Garnished with Caviar
Taro Root and Avocado Tacos

Passed Entrees

Handmade Pretzels Stuffed with Pimento and Parmesan Cheese
Bacon-wrapped Dates
Small Chicken Pot Pies with Black Truffles
Baked Potatoes with Black Caviar
Shanghai Lobster
Short Ribs with Goulash and Spaetzle

Desserts

Licorice and Chocolate Parfait with Caramelized Tobacco Leaves (Gluten Free!)
Yuzu Semi Freddo with Green Tea Meringue and Sake Blueberries
Caramel Garden of Coffee "Soil" Supporting a Chocolate Malted Tree with Fleur de Sel

Yet the revere that Hollywood holds for fine food and all matters culinary is not limited to the grand galas surrounding Oscar Night. In nearly every decade there have been great films about food, wine, the people who create them and those who truly enjoy them. Here are some of the best:

Babette's Feast

Chocolat

Julie and Julia

Ratatouille

Vatel

El Somni Is Truly a Culinary Opera Dream Come True

For over a year now the famed Roca Brothers of Spain have been crafting a unique culinary presentation, El Somni, a culinary opera.

Their truly amazing creation is a stunning collaboration of cuisine, form, music and wonder – worthy of the esteemed name, ‘Opera’.

The universality of this 'great work' (for that is what the word ‘opera’ actually means), is reflected in the diversity of the first 12 individuals invited to experience the work.

The premiere guest list included an HIV researcher, a fellow chef, an anthropologist, an actress, a theoretical physicist, a poet, an artist, a film director, a research biologist, a conductor, a food writer and a robotics researcher.

The composition of the work is divided into 12 concepts or courses that wrap the viewing diner in The Dream that is the experience’s title translated.

The courses pay homage to the great French chef François Vatel, who killed himself in 1671 when his concept for a vital banquet that was to be served to the French King Louis XIV was destroyed by the late delivery of fresh fish from the coast.

Such was the temperament of a dedicated artist when art was an expected part of the 'noble' life.

EL SOMNI MENU

Prelude: Water Nymph (Vegetable soup at low temperature, sprouts, flowers and light)
The Dream Begins (Moon)
Space (Foams frost Indian figue)
Ophiucus (Electric eel)
Under the Sea (Shrimps, plankton, and anemones, sea urchins, cockles, seawater, crustaceans)
Garden of the Hesperides (Anarkia)
The Courtship (Ying yang Palo Cortado oysters with garlic and white all black)
The Carnality (Pueblano pigeon breast with mole, grilled strawberries and roses)
Apple/Brittle (Golden apple)
War (Royal hare roial with blood orange and beet)
Mercy/Death (Parmentier potatoes with purple bone marrow,caviar, purple flowers and incense smoke)
Glory (Dessert mass mother, mother dough ice cream)
Awakening (Sweet spring)

Yet the wonder of the evening does not rest solely on the event's innovation cuisine. Expanding on the talents developed in the three brothers’ world famous restaurant,El Celler de Can Roca, these three creative chefs also collaborated with a diverse group of visual artists, includingFranc Aleu, Daniel Molina, Pere Grife,andPeret, to create an experience that defies the limits of culinary classification.

After its initial premiere in Barcelona, this unique work will be hosted at 12 different locations around the world, followed by a documentary book, exhibit and finallya filmby Mediapro.

If possible, do all you can to attend. Like listening to great opera performed well for the first time, afterwards you will never view the world in quite that same way as before. And that is, truly, the definition of great art.