Dinner and The Movies

My friend Calvin invited me to participate in an “Iron Chef” style themed-menu cook-off with him over the weekend. He was a little sparse on the details except to say that there would be about 20 guests at a dinner party for one of his clients. The theme was “food and the movies” and the idea was for each of us to present a menu where each dish reflected the theme of a certain movie. I whipped up a menu and sent it over to him, certain he would send it back with budgetary restrictions, but he didn’t. He said it looked good, and that cost wasn’t really a concern with this party. The host would pay whatever was necessary to get a top-notch dinner.

I’d put in a lot of hours at work for the week and asked Calvin to pick up most of the menu food for the evening. He’d said we’d have a couple of guys to help us prep things, and I assumed we’d be working out of the clubhouse kitchen since the host lived in a country club community. Some stuff I had to pick up myself on Friday because I wanted to cook and roast it overnight. I got all the ingredients, but then life and wife intervened and I didn’t get anything done on Friday night.

I got up around 4 am Saturday and began cooking my meats and smoking sugar plums for a sauce. That and a few other things kept me busy until it was time to go to the Spartan Race in Conyers. I pulled all the meats and let them chill while I went and ran the race. The race took longer than I planned and I had to rush back home, hop in the shower, scub off the mud and blood, get dressed and pack all the food. I high-tailed it over to the address Calvin gave me and found out we were not cooking at a clubhouse, but at someone’s home. I arrived a half hour late, but got right to work. The help Calvin suggested was coming never came and I had to do everything by myself. I worked on a tiny space on the counter top and Calvin and I had to share stovetop space. I finished up the components of my four dishes just as the guests were sitting down.

Calvin and I took turns taking out our dishes and explaining the plates and their connections to the movies. Calvin did a clam linguini inspired by “The Little Mermaid”, a grits and short-rib dish via “My Cousin Vinny”, a shrimp trio on cedar plank hommage to “Forrest Gump”, and a Royale with Cheese burger with vanilla shake ala “Pulp Fiction”.

My dishes were: “From Russia With Love” which had a potato hash tower wrapped with smoked salmon and topped with salmon roe, frisee salad, vodka cream sauce and borscht vinaigrette; “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with a saffron-poached tiger shrimp crouching over a tamarind-glazed slice of bbq’d eel on a bed of green tea tapioca pearls, honey braised carrots, smoked plum sauce and lime chili pickle; “One Upon A Time In Mexico” with chipolte roasted pork tamale, adobo salsa, “riced” jicama and stewed tomatillo; and “Spaghetti Western” with BBQ chuck roast, BBQ marinara, calico baked beans, fresh fettuccini noodles and piavi cheese.

The guests scored us on presentation, taste, and tie-in to the movie. Calvin ended up winning but I didn’t care, it was his party and his guests and it was all in fun anyway. I got reimbursed for my expenses and a nice little wad of cash for helping him out. We cooked and plated and ran food and cleaned and packed up and it was 1am before I left their house and headed home. I had to unpack and unload it was after 2am by the time I was able to go to bed.

Everyone had a great time and we got lots of compliments and handshakes and back-pats on the food and the originality of our concepts. It certainly was fun to do and I always learn something while doing these kinds of gigs(ie, you can never be too organized!). Hopefully we will get to do something fun like this in the future.