All About The Oscars Dinner (Part Two) 🏆 🎬
A rundown of the dessert and drinks.
Happy Oscars Sunday to all who celebrate! Here’s the rest of the recap of my Oscars dinner party. If you missed the first part, you can read it here:
So Nice We Did It Twice
This year, I did something I’ve never done before: host the same dinner party two nights in a row. There was a seating on Saturday night, and then another Sunday evening. The idea was to maximize the number of people who could attend, and while I would have loved to cook for twenty people at once, the physical limitations of a New York apartment limits me to ten guests per dinner. (Perhaps next year, I can find a larger space… but along with additional staffing, that would also double my costs. But I think there would be a market for this.)
It’s a lot of work pulling these things off. A friend of a friend saw the Google Doc I used to work out the logistics and thought I had to be a product manager, which is a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. Because nearly all of the prep was finished on Saturday, the Sunday service went by super smoothly. It also helped that Eric was there to handle the dishes, which had slowed us down a lot the night before.
And now, picking up back up where we left off, with the end of the savory courses…
Charcuterie et Fromage (Anatomy of a Fall)
Thanks to the knowledgeable folks at Murray’s Cheese, I brought in three different cheeses that had the French Alps vibe of the film’s setting:
Meadow Creek Extra-Aged Appalachian, the clear crowd favorite and a stand-in for Tomme de Savoie
Petit Préféré de nos Montagnes, a cheese similar to the Savoie region’s famed Reblochon (which is illegal to import because it’s not aged for very long)
Crémeux de Bourgogne, a triple crème that is intended to be spread onto crackers.
Accompanying the fromage was a saucisson sec, dried apricots, cornichons, mustard, strawberry jam, and sourdough crackers (with parsley and thyme) that I made from scratch.
Wine pairing: Côtes-du-Rhône, Dom. des Fées - 2021 “This was a location based selection. Savoie reds aren’t as prominent players on tables but Côte-du-Rhônes definitely are. The cheese selections were immaculate so I went for a producer that knew how to make great, serious wine that would clean the palate but wouldn’t be overpowering and lingering. The son of Clos du Fées did not disappoint with his entry level cuvée.”
Pink Smoothie (Barbie)
A simple strawberry and banana smoothie was a natural fit for Barbie. Funny enough, I had never actually made a smoothie until this dinner. I didn’t know when to turn the blender off but fortunately other people told me when. I garnished each cup with a raspberry, to add a little extra hit of fruit flavor.
Szarlotka (The Zone of Interest)
It was tough, at first, to find a food pairing for The Zone of Interest that was not insensitive/cancellable. Luckily, I came across Szarlotka, a Polish apple pie. This fit the movie well — Auschwitz was located in Poland, and apples figure into the narrative a decent bit. Far less sweet than American apple pies, and much easier to make, it was a crowd pleaser. I used a recipe that called for topping the cake with meringue, which gave a classier touch to this rustic dessert.
Since I had a couple guests who were either gluten-free or allergic to eggs, the easy, and tasty, alternative dish was a baked apple, stuffed with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.
Wine pairing: Trollinger Trocken, Weingut Beurer - 2022 “Typically with baked apples, you’d pair with a sparkling wine that resembles the same. We were so deep into the reds that this Trollinger, a high-carbon grape that was biodynamic farmed and fermented with ambient yeast, gave everyone that sensation. The bright fruits, pop-rock-esque, & zippy acidity was the glue to the entire experience.”.
Cherries Jubilee (The Holdovers)
I made this before, when I put together a dinner & a movie party for The Holdovers. Since then, I’ve purchased a portable induction burner, which meant I could do a proper tableside flambé. Claire Saffitz’s recipe was great the first time I made it, so I saw no reason to switch it up. Funny enough, the hardest part about making this was finding the jarred sour cherries. I live near a lot of fancy grocery stores: Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Brooklyn Fare… they’re too good to sell sour cherries. They only had maraschino cherries, which would have been far too sweet for this dish. I had to order a jar from Amazon, at a significant markup.
And here’s video of the tableside flambé! Definitely need to work more flambés into my menus.
And there we have it! Ten films, ten courses, two nights, two and a half staffers, and twenty very full bellies. But there’s more than just food…
The Drinks
My favorite part of my dinner parties is when they end, because then we shift into cocktail party mode. (Shots are happily served as well.) With consultation from Eric, I put together a drink menu that followed the same rules as the food: ten movies, ten drinks, each a thematic pairing.
Cosmopolitan (Barbie)
It’s pink, easy to drink, and light. Everyone’s Oscars cocktail menu should feature a Cosmo. (Specs from Punch)
Nuclear Daiquiri (Oppenheimer)
A daiquiri riff that includes green chartreuse and falernum for a radioactively good time! Served in two glasses, a Nick & Nora glass and a tiny shot glass: Fat Man and Little Boy.
Corn & Oil (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Essentially a rum old-fashioned, this Carribean-ish cocktail really has nothing to do with the movie besides the “Oil” in the name. My original idea was to make this sage and cinnamon infused whiskey sour, and dot the top with coffee liqueur to represent oil.
Bella’s Martini (Poor Things)
Popular cocktail bar Dante did a collaboration with Searchlight Pictures when Poor Things was released, creating a martini that incorporated components from everywhere that Bella ventures to on her journey: London, Lisbon, Paris, and Alexandria. Fortunately, the recipe has been published online, so I didn’t have to workshop this much. I’m usually a martini hater, but the harsh gin flavor is tempered with some pisco, and white port gives the drink a much needed sweetness. Spritzing the martini with a fragrant rosewater (or orange blossom water, because that's what I had) makes it smell nice, and dotting the top with a drop of olive oil, followed by blue curaçao, brings the presentation together. It sort of looks like an olive, and the cerulean blue of the curaçao ties the martini to one of the film’s primary colors. Highly recommend making this one!
Oppie’s Martini (Oppenheimer)
This is J. Robert Oppenheimer’s official martini recipe: four ounces of gin and a dash of vermouth; the rim of the chilled glass dipped in honey and lime juice (a bit more than 50% honey). Unsurprisingly, no one asked for this.
Blood Orange Negroni (Anatomy of a Fall)
From David Lebovitz’s newsletter: a negroni with French ingredients, freshened up by blood orange juice. Matches well with the movie, in my opinion!
Manhattan (Maestro)
Originally I wanted to do a tequila manhattan with Maestro Dobel añejo, but I didn’t want to track that down just for a bit. So I just made a classic manhattan with Rittenhouse Rye and Cocchi Torino vermouth.
Beer and Shot (The Holdovers)
This one’s a gimme. A bottle of Miller High Life, with a shot of bourbon, Paul Hunham’s spirit of choice.
Killsboro “Killsner” Pilsner (The Zone of Interest)
Okay so I wanted to get a smoked lager for this one (give me one semi-cancellable pairing!), but literally every New York brewery stopped making smoked lagers, even though they were everywhere last fall. Guess the season is over. (The excellent Strong Rope Brewery still has a smoked lager, but it was only available on draft). Scanning the beers available at Whole Foods, a German-style pilsner from a brewery called Killsboro was the best I could do.
While writing that paragraph, I realized an apple-infused Polish vodka could have worked too.
Scotch Flight (American Fiction)
You can tell that this movie was based on a book published twenty years ago because those Johnnie Walker prices are like two-thirds of what they are today. I didn’t have it in me to buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue because it costs $240. I knew I had to get a handle of Johnnie Walker Red for the bit, which, you should know, comes in a plastic bottle. To accompany the shit scotch, I got one of my favorite whiskeys, an American single malt from St. George that was aged in umeshu casks, and a single malt that was distilled in 1995 and aged for 18 years. That last bottle was just $100, quite a steal.
Soju!!! (Past Lives)
This needs no explanation, does it?
And that closes the book on the Oscars dinner (and in roughly twelve hours, the end of this year’s awards season). The Academy Awards, and the whole apparatus built around it, have their shortcomings. But there’s no other time that a disparate collection of films such as these are celebrated together, a reason to build an entire dinner menu around these ten unrelated movies.
I’ve got a big day ahead of me to finish preparing all the food I’m making for an Oscars viewing party. My original plan was to take it easy and just order pizza… but I got excited about cooking more stuff. I’ll probably write some quick takes for the Oscars on Monday, though it’ll probably be drowned out in a deluge of other thinkpieces and recaps.
And thanks to my friends who took some great photos of the Oscars dinner: Pearl, Wendy, and Giselle ensured I could share this dinner on this newsletter.