So, today’s Fair Food Fight Film is Chocolat!

This one seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it movie: either you love it for being gentle and comforting, or you hate it for being predictable and treacly. I don’t have a dog in this fight whatsoever, mainly because this movie is so useful for Supporting Actor Bingo that I’m just pleased it got made because now I can get from Nina Foch to Miranda Richardson like THAT.

I will, however, put up a fight that Chocolat is a great food movie, because food plays such a main role that it’s hardly even a metaphor any more; without any of the conflict in which chocolate plays a part, you’d still have a perfectly good short film about a lady in a snappy cloak who comes to town and makes awesome goodies in a big gorgeous montage of mole sauce and hot chocolate and almond cake, and the village loves everything and parties forever, the end.

Plus, I’m just a sucker for a nice mise-en-scene every once in a while.

Johannes Vermeer, Juliette Binoche with Milk Pitcher, 1658

Just saying.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I really like talking about movies. Fair Food Fight also noticed, and asked me if I would be interested in starting a blog series there, reporting (and snarking) on food in film. Don’t have to ask me twice!

Welcome to Fair Food Fight Films, awesomely abbreviated FFFFilms, which sounds like you’re about to cuss if you say it out loud, so that’s not recommended unless you say all the words. It will cover food in movies, from those which are entirely about food (like Big Night) to those that simply use food in world-building (Chicken goooood).

For the initial offering, the clear front-runner was Babette’s Feast. It’s about food, it’s about food as metaphor, and more than anything, it’s about a village full of the most emotionally constipated, ungrateful folk you’ll ever find.

I mention this more over at Fair Food Fight, but it bugged me so much I’m laying it down here, too; there’s a huge “art doesn’t require gratitude” theme in this movie hammered home by poor Babette slaving away in the kitchen and never hearing word one about how delicious it was. I completely understand, cinematically, why it was there. But I was also raised that you thank the person who cooked the meal, even if you can’t bear the idea of gnawing the head off the guinea fowl up there and end up eating nothing but puff pastry and gravy with one eye closed. It’s just manners, metaphorically-saturated village people, damn!

Last night after a totally-packed KGB, we descended upon the Dessert Truck. Everything I’ve ever had there has been awesome, so I decided to order their seasonal offering, caramelized pears with anise panna cotta.

What it should have tasted like:

What it actually tasted like:

It tasted like canned peach pieces from an old school lunch, poured on top of rancid vanilla pudding. I don’t even think it was the anise flavor, because I love licorice; I even love the crazy Danish licorice with that sour salt on the outside that burns the roof of your mouth off! Strong anise – not a problem. But this anise panna cotta crap has GOT to STOP. And the PEARS, UGH. I got home and scrambled for my mouthwash, just to get the taste out of my mouth. It was spectacularly bad.

I plan to go back soon and get something else, one of the many desserts they have that does not taste like some unholy poison, but word to the wise: don’t order the pears.

Because it gives you a recipe for salted water:

When salting water for cooking, use 1 tablespoon of salt for every 4 quarts of water.

And the eight hundred reviews of the recipe.

* As a Canadian, I am on the metric system and have no idea what a quart is. Furthermore, I had to substitute beavers for the salt, and beer for water. The boiling process caused my igloo to melt, leaving me homeless. Two forks.

* I used iodized sea salt and added an extra 1/8 tsp. Definitely upped the ante. My guests were begging me for the recipe.

* I have been making something similar to this since it first appeared in Gourmet magazine in 1992. But I misplaced the recipe years ago and have had to improvise since, with out much luck. Thank you Epicurious for reacquainting me with this oldie but goody!

My own review: this website gave me my review for lemon icing. Proceed with caution.

It’s just as well that I never go into my kitchen. I have some kind of entropic field.

An old friend of mine came into town, and as part of the evening’s festivities we baked gingerbread, because that’s how we roll. And by “we baked,” I mean that I stood in the kitchen and handed her things, and she baked. It came out nicely! It smelled like a molasses factory, in a good way. It looked like normal gingerbread should look:

Disclaimer: this picture of gingerbread is a representative example, and not our actual gingerbread.

See, I asked for lemon icing, which sounded appropriately delicious. We banged around in the refrigerator for lemons, and pulled out sugar, and followed the recipe exactly. I stood and watched, helpfully, and imagined the gingerbread coming out with that slightly rum-soaked glaze that happens all the time in the food shows, where women pour things contentedly over cakes and the camera pushes in like it’s porn.

When the “lemon glaze” was finished, we poured it over the gingerbread in a very prosaic and you-missed-a-spot way that gives me new respect for anyone who can cook on camera, and let it cool.

Something went horribly wrong at some point (entropic fieeeeeld), and now the gingerbread looks like this:

Good news: if you can peel the lemon off, it’s delicious.

* Band name!