The KitchAnnette 2018 Red Carpet Menu is HERE!

This is my favorite time of year. We are deep into award season and the Oscar® nominations were just announced Tuesday morning! Ever since then, I’ve been a whirling dervish devising this year’s scrumptious menu followed by tweaking the movie posters to reflect my dishes!!!

I have to admit… the buzz about a lot of these had me ruminating about the dishes well before the nominations were official. Luckily a lot of my friends were in the same frame of mind and made  amazing suggestions, which I’ll talk more about below.

Some of you are new to KitchAnnette so I’ll do a QUICK explanation. Every year since David Letterman hosted the Oscars in 1995, I have hosted an Oscar event featuring a meal based on the Best Picture nominations. The criteria for the menu is to create dishes that reflect the movie they are representing and be named for said movie. There must be at least one appetizer, main course, side dish, salad, and dessert. Finally the meal must work as a stand-alone without the movies. Whew! All these rules I made up! My cookbook, Red Carpet Menus: Delicious Dishes Inspired by 20 Years of Oscar® Best Picture Nominations, has the first 20 years of recipes, Oscar memories, and more!

So without further ado, here is the 2018 Red Carpet Menu!!!!

Appetizers:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a very layered movie. Every character has their own story that intensified due to those billboards. The Golden Globe wins for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell were well deserved. As for my dish, Three Flatbreads Served In Tuckahoe, New York, it will be three flatbreads slathered with a roasted red pepper spread and black olive tapenade. It took THREE FRIENDS Inside My Awesome Life to bring this selection to life! Barbara DeBisschop came up with the flatbreads idea – GENIUS! As I worked on what they would be topped with, I had to finish the title. Three Flatbreads Served In… what sounds like Ebbing, Missouri??? Jen Savastano threw the “Tuckahoe New York” tag on it! I will be serving it in Tuckahoe so that is hysterically perfect. Now that I had the title and the dish, it was on to the poster and I couldn’t quite create the “Ebbings” style for Tuckahoe. Uber-talented designer and musician, Bob Delevante, showed up with, not only the name of the font, but he actually created the patch for me! Do yourself a favor and BUY HIS CD, get turned on by his design and his photography. YEAH!

The Post is intense. It’s not only incredible that this went on in the ’70’s AND they actually used the real tapes of Nixon in the movie, but it’s eerily relevant now. My first thought was “The Roast” but due to already choosing the main course, I wasn’t thrilled. Well, leave it to my friend Vicki Merten to innocently say “what’s roasted and pressed”? BAM! The Press! We’ll be making a ham for yummy ham and cheese paninis.

I LOVE The Shape of Water!!! It’s beautiful… you enter the world of the movie and you are IN! Wonderful story, great performances… it’s magic. For this dish I was REALLY perplexed. Hard boiled eggs are featured so I was set on it being deviled eggs but I couldn’t come up with the title of the dish. Then I mulled over making sous vide steak but again thought about it… he’s in the tank… floating greenery… that tank he’s in… hmmm… soup! The Steak in Water is beef and spinach egg drop soup! It’s gonna be good.

Main Course:

The performances in Lady Bird are so rich. Laurie Metcalf steals the show! The movie touches on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships and finding your place in the world as a teen. Soooo good. As for the dish, it was a “duh” that it would be chicken or turkey. I didn’t know what I would call it, what flavor profile I’d use… and it was bugging me. Then out of the blue, my brain spit out Marmalade-y – YES! Marmalade-y Bird will be an orange marmalade glazed roasted chicken. YUM!

Side Dishes:

Phantom Thread is a rich tapestry of the complex life of a couture British fashion designer in the ’50’s – PUN INTENDED! It’s billed as Daniel Day Lewis’ last acting project. He does not disappoint. The whole movie is lush and lovely to behold. There’s a whole “thread” of the dynamic of the 3 leads in the Hitchcock classic, “Rebecca”, which, for you young-in’s, is a fabulous film you must watch. The dish… the designer sews little messages into his dresses so I knew I’d have to have a “phantom” ingredient in my dish. It’s going to be a potato mushroom hash baked to crispy perfection! Seems very straightforward until you read the ingredient list… and I’ll leave it there. There’s a hint “sewn into” the poster but you’ll have to wait for the recipe reveal!

Darkest Hour is a heavy film. Gary Oldman does a superlative job as Winston Churchill. His recent Golden Globe win is well warranted. It’s the second film that is based on a true story, which are always more compelling. I wasn’t sure what this would be. A dark chocolate cake was the first thought – and a good one – but my dessert options were already decided and I needed a side dish. And then it hit me. CauliFLOWER. The idea of a flower for the film, being the beauty/light at the end of a very dark time. Darkest ‘Flower is roasted purple cauliflower, which complements the potato hash and glazed chicken beautifully!

Get Out is the surprise of the season! I admit… I had no desire to see this film upon it’s release. It sounded like a schlock horror film and I had other films on my list. But then the buzz started… then it got nominated for a Golden Globe and I noticed it was on HBO. OK… so I saw it. And WOW! It was so smart… so much fun… really well done! Jordan Peele has been a consistently funny performer, most notably for his show, Key & Peele but now… he’s unstoppable! If you see the movie, you will totally get how perfect this title is. Again, Barbara came up with it without a blink upon hearing the nominations! Woo hoo! Perfection! Veg Out a salad of chopped veggies with a TEA-infused “lemonade” dressing.

What are the odds that 2 films in the same year… in the same category of nominations… would cover the exact same time and situation but from different perspectives. While Darkest Hour focuses on how to get the soldiers home, Dunkirk is about the soldiers stranded on the beach being possibly sacrificed and the average citizens who crossed the Channel to save them. When I saw the word “Dunkirk”, I saw “Dunk”… Donuts! So this dessert is Dunkcake – cake donuts “sanded” with cinnamon sugar with a chocolate mocha sauce for dunking!

Call Me By Your Name is a movie I literally want to leap into. I want to spend my summer at a lush Italian villa, dancing, eating, reading, having wonderful conversations and dinner parties, and basking in a passionate embrace. If you’ve seen the movie… well… yeah… there is NO WAY to get around using peaches. And so it is a crostata… Call Me Peach A-Flame. An almond shortbread crust filled with custard and peaches flambé poured over the top. A sexy dessert for a sexy movie.

And that is the full 2018 KitchAnnette Red Carpet Menu!!!! I’m really excited about it. Over the next few weeks I’ll be unveiling the recipes!

Get to the movies and see the wondrous selections. Oh and as good as all the movies are, my money’s on The Shape of Water to win Best Picture!

Annette