Oscar Moments

Ahhh…it’s Oscar time once more.  Roll out the red carpet, put on your pearl necklace and get your pastries ready because it’s time to eat and celebrate!

I love the Oscars.  It’s what I would call the equivalent Super Bowl for those less sport inclined.  Does it make us any less rowdy and raucous or hungry for good food?  Certainly not, in fact we want more food, the best, most delicious food money can buy…I mean someone has to do the eating because the celebrities certainly aren’t.

Each year we gather with friends to celebrate this most festive time in film, usually with a handsome betting pool for the person who gets the most Oscar picks correct, followed by a food themed competition pertaining in some way to a nominated film.  This, of course, is the part I love.

We were a small bunch this year, opting to stay at home and watch with a few friends in the comfort of our living room.  I must be getting older because I have become aware of getting home late “on school nights”, and the thought of a midnight drive home on a Sunday seemed absolutely undoable with the work schedule I’ve been keeping.  My youth is apparently fleeting.   No matter, I still made enough dessert for a crowd.

My choice for the 2010 Oscar party is…(drum roll) Tarte Au Fromage Frais!  This simple, rustic cheese tart ties in with the movie “Julie and Julia”.  In the movie, Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and does an amazing job.  I’ve always loved Julia, and the movie brought to life how entertaining she really was.  The plot of the film has to do with a blogger (Julie Powell) cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking within the time frame of a year, and keeping a blog about her adventures.  It’s sort of like me with all my Martha Stewart recipes…the film version would be "Marty and Martha"…but I digress.  For me, the parts of the film having to do with Julia Child were fantastic and I could have watched a whole movie about her alone.  I think the inspiration, for me at least, is obvious.  Julia Child loved to cook and bake (as do I) as well as loved to eat and laugh (which I also enjoy). 

We acquired a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a cute little antiques shop in the Hamptons a few years back, but I have to be honest and say I’ve never made anything out of it before.  Thumbing through the pages of the massive French tomb I came across multiple delicious things to make, but the fromage tart stood out for me in its simplicity and rustic elegance.  It’s almost like making a quiche and it rises in the oven like a soufflé, but at the end of the day it tastes like the most delicious cheesecake you’ve ever had.  The filling is nothing but butter, cream cheese, sugar, 2 eggs and nutmeg…how simple is that?  And the crust is basic pate sucree dough, which is called sweet short paste in Julia’s volume.  It too is quite simple to make and can be done in a food processor in no time at all.  The recipe is as follows:

Crust (Pate Brisee Sucree)

1 cup all purpose Flour

1 Tbsp. Sugar

1/8 tsp. Salt

4 Tbsp. Butter

1 Tbsp Chilled Vegetable Shortening (Crisco)

2 1/2 to 3 Tbsp. Cold water

If you have a food processor, this is really easy.  Just add in the dry ingredients and pulse to combine.  Add in the butter and shortening, pulsing until the butter becomes pea sized pieces.  Lastly, slowly drizzle in the water until the dough just barely holds together (you may not need all of the water depending on the humidity of the day)…and then STOP!  Don’t over-mix.  You want to be able to see small pieces of butter within the dough.  Form it into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap, chill for an hour. 

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Once your chilling hour is up, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to about a 1/8 of an inch thick.  You can either use a tart ring or a standard nine-inch pie plate as your vessel.  Roll the dough up onto your rolling pin for easy transportation, and simply unroll it into your pie plate.  Line the dough with parchment paper, and then add dry beans or some form of small weights to keep the bottom of the crust from rising as you bake.  Put the crust in the oven for 8-10 minutes, just until it starts to turn gold around the edges. 

Remove the crust from the oven, remove the weights and parchment paper and prick the bottom all over with a fork (this is called docking).  The holes will help keep the bottom of the crust from puffing as it continues to bake.  Place your crust in the oven for 2-3 minutes more to let it finish setting up.  Let the crust cool for a few minutes and turn the oven down to 375 degrees. 

Filling:

1 8oz package of cream cheese (room temperature)

1 stick of butter (room temperature)

2/3 Cup of sugar

2 eggs

Big pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

This is the easy part.  Place your butter, cream cheese and sugar in a mixing bowl fitted with the paddle attachment.  Cream them together on medium high for about 4 minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl.  Add in your eggs one at a time, thoroughly combining after each one.  Last, add in your nutmeg and call it a day!

Pour your filling into the cooled tart crust and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.  It will puff up big, golden and beautiful…then deflate into its special tart shape.  You know it’s done when you insert the point of a knife in the center and it comes out clean.

As with many simple seeming things in life, complexity lies hidden within.  The texture is smooth and creamy with the nutmeg sitting on the back of your tongue as a delightful hint of spice.  This really is one of the best “cheesecakes” you’ll ever have.

As I said before, we like to do themed desserts every year to accompany the party, and in years past I was a bit more on the adventurous side.  Last year I made sticky buns for the movie “Doubt”…but we of course called them Father Flynn’s sticky buns because of the subject matter of the film.  In poor taste?  Quite possibly, but I never claimed to be a saint (budumpbump, symbol crash).   Why I don’t have photos of the sticky buns I have no idea, but all I know is they were really delicious.  They were a recipe from Ina Garten’s Back To Basics, and are a bit of a cheat because they are made with frozen puff pastry.  Trust me, no one will ever know or care.

The year prior to the sticky buns must be my favorite; it was certainly the most involved and had the greatest effect.  “There Will Be Blood” was a truly masterful film and I was inspired to take its namesake and turn it into a cake, a red velvet cake to be exact.  Behold:  There Will Be Blood Red Velvet Cake.  I love this one.  I used my Aunt Helen’s recipe for red velvet cake, but I believe I used two bottles of red food coloring instead of the lesser amount called for in the recipe.  It came out red all right!  The frosting was a chocolate buttercream and I covered the top with cocoa dust to simulate the barren lands surrounding an oil field, and made a derrick out of a chocolate bar I scored, cut and glued together with melted chocolate.  When I was done with it I was proud. 

The year before that was the Tower of Babel cake, inspired by the movie “Babel”.  I tried to make a towering cake, each tier a different flavor representing the prominent flavor profiles of the countries featured in the film, and the buttercream frosting on the outside was carved with “stones” using a toothpick.  It was a really good cake too, but we had leftovers for days.  No one needs that many tiers unless they are at a wedding.

As you can see, baking inspiration can come from almost anywhere.  Films are a great resource, and a challenge when put in the context of an Oscar food competition.  One not only has to have creatively imagined food, but it has to taste good too to pull out the win. 

Although we didn’t bet this year, it still was a lot of fun ordering in pizza and eating a classic French tart while celebrating another year in films.  Anytime Meryl Streep is up for an award it’s a good year for Brian, and the fact that she was playing Julia Child made it all the more wonderful for me.  Sadly, Meryl didn’t win (thanks to that lousy Sandra Bullock), but I still hold Julia in my heart and a tart in my belly.  It’s just who I am.