Big Eden

Mary Margaret: Whose is this?
Henry: That's so old. Is it any good?
Mary Margaret: It's unbelievable! Who makes tortes out here anyway?
Henry: That's the widow Thayer, she made that.
Mary Margaret: You're saying she made this?
Henry: Right. She's the one who's been doing all the cooking.
Mary Margaret: A woman did not make this.
Henry: What is that supposed to mean?
Mary Margaret: Nothing. I don't mean anything by it. I'm just saying a woman didn't make this.

Henry: Please stay for supper, Pike.
Pike: Why?
Henry: Look at the size of this trout.

The directorial debut of Thomas Bezucha (who also directed The Family Stone), Big Eden was a breakthrough film that finally depicted gay men of all shapes, sizes, and ages navigating the treacherous waters of love just like regular folks, with no over-the-top drama or circuit boys or any other stereotypically “gay” details thrown in just for laughs. When Henry (Gross) visits his hometown in rural Montana to care for his ailing grandfather, he discovers that Dean (DeKay), his high school “crush,” has also recently returned home. But while Henry pursues Dean (without actually coming out of the closet), Pike (Schweig), the owner of the general store, falls “head over heels” for Henry. Since Pike is too shy to approach Henry directly, he decides to learn to cook and proceeds to prepare dinner for Henry and his grandfather, surreptitiously substituting his dishes for the ones made by the widow Thayer (Martin). Despite promptings from his friends in town, it takes Henry a long time to get over his obsession with his straight friend Dean and to realize his affection for Pike and understand Pike’s for him.
“So, what’s for eats?” Henry asks, and the audience is richly rewarded with a parade of amazing dishes. At the same time, the film’s depiction of Pike’s progress in the kitchen serves as a real culinary education. He begins by reading The Joy of Cooking, and it remains his “bible” throughout the film; but he also refers to Cooking Light, Gourmet, and Food & Wine magazines, creating tasty dishes because he wants “things to be nice” for Henry. The film shows many of Pike’s creations—chicken with apricots, olives, and figs; stuffed green peppers; mushroom and spinach salad; baked salmon garnished with radishes and celery; steamed clams; curly endive and cucumber salad; chicken with carrots, celery, and beans; trout poached in white wine (he sends his friends out to the stream to catch the trout!); mushroom soup—and the viewer even hears tell of a delicious peach sorbet (made in Montana, in the winter!).


No movie about familial relationships would be complete without a Thanksgiving meal, and Big Eden depicts the usual dysfunctional gathering, with all the trimmings: turkey, green beans, biscuits, potato salad, and cherry and pumpkin pies. The masterpiece of this meal, however, is the platter of endive, asparagus, yellow and orange peppers, and bean sprouts.

Other foods are mentioned: cappuccino, cottage cheese and sour cream pancakes, burgers with onions or cheese or chili, ribs, corn on the cob, watermelon. The plot hinges on Henry’s discovery of who actually made the delicious torte he discusses with Mary Margaret (Cox): he thinks it was the widow, just as he believed all along that she was preparing dinner for him and his grandfather, but when she admits that the food was not hers, Henry finally opens his eyes and begins to accept the love that is being showered upon him. The way to a man’s heart truly is through his stomach!
Released 2000

Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha

Starring Arye Gross as Henry Hart, Eric Schweig as Pike Dexter, Tim DeKay as Dean Stewart, Louise Fletcher as Grace Cornwell, George Coe as Sam Hart, Nan Martin as Widow Thayer, O'Neal Compton as Jim Soams, Corinne Bohrer as Anna Rudolph, Veanne Cox as Mary Margaret Bishop

Awards: 2001 Cleveland International Film Festival Best Film and Best American Independent Feature Film (Bezucha); 2001 Florida Film Festival Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature (Bezucha); 2000 L.A. Outfest Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Feature (Bezucha) and Grand Jury Award for Outstanding Actor in a Feature Film (Schweig); 2001 Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Jury Award for Best Fiction Feature (Bezucha); 2000 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Audience Award for Best Feature (Bezucha); 2000 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Audience Award for Favorite Narrative Feature (Bezucha); 2001 Toronto Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival for Best Feature Film or Video (Bezucha)

Tortilla Soup

Our most recent cooking endeavor was based upon the food in the film Tortilla Soup. This one expanded our boundaries a bit, for the recipes called for everything from octopus to banana leaves, squash blossoms, and cactus paddles! But it was fun to put together, and it was a great end-of-summer grilling opportunity--the last of the season?--well, who knows what the next movie will require?

Fun Fact
The chefs who prepared the food served in Tortilla Soup, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, are also known as the “Too Hot Tamales,” which was also the name of their series on the Food Network (1995-1999). The dishes they cooked for filming were based upon the menus at their famous restaurants, Cuidad in Los Angeles and the Border Grill in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

In Brief
Released August 21, 2001

Starring Hector Elizondo as Martin Naranjo, Raquel Welch as Hortensia, Jacqueline Obradors as Carmen Naranjo, Tamara Mello as Maribel Naranjo, Elizabeth Peña as Leticia Naranjo, Nikolai Kinski as Andy, Constance Marie as Yolanda, and Paul Rodriguez as Orlando Castillo

Directed by Maria Ripoll

Screenplay by Hui-Ling Wang, Ang Lee, James Schamus, Ramón Menéndez, Tom Musca, and Vera Blasi

Awards: 2002 American Latino Musical Arts (ALMA) Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (Peña); 2002 Imagen Foundation Award for Best Theatrical Feature Film

Food prepared by Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken

"It's a very sensual film, and the food of course is just a metaphor for all the different characters in the story. We're all very different, and each character is quite unpredictable in their own way."
—Raquel Welch

Movie quotations

Do you know why we clink glasses before drinking?... It's so that all the five senses are involved. We touch the glass. We smell the drink. We see its color. We taste it. Hearing is the only sense that doesn't participate unless we create it.--Carmen Naranjo

I love toppings. Sometimes I go to restaurants and I just order toppings.--Orlando Castillo

The last two photos depict our version of tortilla soup--with just enough hot spiciness to inflame the palate!

Fast Food Nation

Based on the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, the film Fast Food Nation is a dramatic portrayal of America’s relationship with fast food—burgers, fries, chicken tenders, shakes—and the companies that cook and sell it, the meat-processing plants that make it available, the animals that provide it, and the workers that prepare it. When a marketing executive for Mickey’s Burgers learns of tests that show his company’s Big One burgers are tainted with fecal matter, he travels to Cody, Colorado, to inspect Uni-Globe Meat Packing, the supplier of the hamburger patties. At the same time, several Mexicans who have just illegally crossed over the border are hired to work at Uni-Globe as meat cutters and cleaners. And a young cashier at a Mickey’s Burgers franchise joins with a group of newfound friends to free cows awaiting slaughter from their holding pen. The three plotlines converge, but the filmmakers have chosen realism over drama, and the actions and decisions of the individual characters have little if any lasting effect.

Although animal-slaughtering scenes don’t occur until the end of the film, Fast Food Nation is not a movie that will whet your appetite. Indeed, from the mention of feces-contaminated hamburger in the opening scenes to the depiction of an undocumented worker losing his leg in the meat-processing plant, the film causes viewers to ask if they want to participate in any way in this “machine” that seems to have taken control of America’s eating habits.

Debi Anderson: Well, I guess it is a marketing issue. If the kids die from eating your burgers, it makes them much harder to sell.
Don Anderson: Marketing 101. Don’t kill the customer. Bad for repeat business.

Rudy Martin: By the way, Don, you seem like a nice fella. But the food your company sells is crap—total crap—even when there isn’t manure in it.

Harry Rydell: It is a sad fact of life, Don. But the truth is … we all have to eat a little shit from time to time.


Remarkable Facts
Americans spend more than $140 billion annually at fast food “restaurants”; the U.S. fast-food market is the world’s largest, with China’s second. The average American spends more than $20,000 on fast food in a lifetime; about 25 percent of Americans visit a fast-food restaurant every day. The 3.5 million fast-food workers in the United States represent the largest group of minimum-wage earners.

Released November 17, 2006
Starring Greg Kinnear as Don Anderson, Bruce Willis as Harry Rydell, Ethan Hawke as Pete, Patricia Arquette as Cindy, Kris Kristofferson as Rudy Martin, Bobby Cannavale as Mike, Luis Guzmán as Benny, Ashley Johnson as Amber, Paul Dano as Brian, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Sylvia, Ana Claudia Talancón as Coco, Wilmer Valderrama as Raul, and Avril Lavigne as Alice
Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Eric Schlosser and Richard Linklater, based on the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser

More Recipes from "Titanic"

As we continue to prepare dishes from the films we've selected, we find that certain meals take much longer than we might have anticipated, and sometimes we just run out of steam and have to finish up another night. This is what happened with our preparation of the famous meal from Titanic, the blockbuster film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. So here are some additional selections from that dinner.

The first is Sirloin of Beef, delectable and buttery, prepared with shallots and mushrooms:



Next is Cold Asparagus Vinaigrette, a quite refreshing dish because it is served chilled:

Finally, Chocolate and Vanilla Eclairs. This is a recipe that took us three tries to perfect: the pastry has to be light yet strong, the filling must be smooth yet substantial, and the chocolate sauce must be thick yet spreadable. As chefs, we have to remember that "presentation" is perhaps just as important as taste (but these eclairs are really yummy too!).

Another "Food" Film without Food

“Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?”
--Matt Drayton

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is another film with a meal in the title but no food in the movie. True, the plot centers around a young woman’s decision to bring her fiancé home to dine with her parents, and her further decision to invite his parents to join them all, but the “problem” facing these families (he’s African American, she’s white) keeps them away from the dinner table until very late in the evening. By the time they do sit down to eat, three of the four parents have come to accept that though it may not lead to an easy life, true love is “colorblind.” The viewer is left with hope for the future of the young lovers but only the promise of the fine meal that has been prepared for this momentous evening, a meal that was to feature turtle soup, beef tournedos, and home-baked pie. The only food shown on screen is a light lunch of sandwiches, soup, and coffee and a drive-in snack of fresh Oregon boysenberry sherbet and coffee, so moviegoers would probably have applauded Matt Drayton’s final question, “When the hell are we gonna get some dinner?”

Important Facts:
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was Spencer Tracy’s final film, but it was the first for Katharine Houghton, Katharine Hepburn’s niece.
This was the first movie to show an interracial kiss, a daring step in 1967 America.
Isabel Sanford, who played Tillie, appeared as Louise Jefferson in the hit TV shows All in the Family and The Jeffersons. Beah Richards, who played Mrs. Prentice, starred with Sidney Poitier in 1968’s In the Heat of the Night.

Released 1967
Produced and Directed by Stanley Kramer
Written by William Rose
Starring Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton, Katharine Hepburn as Christina Drayton, Sidney Poitier as John Prentice, Katharine Houghton as Joey Drayton, Beah Richards as Mrs. Prentice, Roy Glenn as Mr. Prentice, Isabel Sanford as Tillie Binks, and Cecil Kellaway as Monsignor Mike Ryan
Awards: 1967 Academy Awards for Best Actress (Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay; 1969 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards for Best Actor (Tracy) and Best Actress (Hepburn) and UN Award for Kramer

Our "Big Night"

Our editor for Cooking with the Movies, Kristi, lives in Denver, so she is unable to attend the "recipe testing" dinners we host in New York, unfortunately. We would love for her to join us at least one evening soon. In the meantime, to give her a sense of "what she's missing" (and to convince her that we are indeed making good progress toward completing our manuscript on time!), here are some photos of our most recent "big night"--the meal we prepared and presented based on the 1996 award-winning film Big Night. Many viewers consider this their favorite "food" movie of all time.

Setting the scene: it was a lovely evening as our guests began to arrive.

The appetizers included Caponata, Peperoni Arrosti, Focaccia Bread with Rosemary, Melanzane Fritte (Fried Eggplant), and Tre Crostini.

Our guests gathered on our back porch for this sumptuous dinner.

The co-authors serving "il primo"--Garganelli en brodo (a soup).

One of the dishes for "il secondo"--Pollo Arrosto (Baked Chicken).

This is the Timpano, the baked pasta creation for which the film is famous.

We wowed our guests with Maialino allo Spiedo (Roasted Pig).

I must say, by the end of the evening, after having cooked for two days, we were just too "destroyed" to clean up! But the food sure was good. In the words of Primo, “To eat good food is to be close to God.”

Big Night was released September 20, 1996.
Starring Tony Shalhoub as Primo, Stanley Tucci as Secondo, Minnie Driver as Phyllis, Isabella Rossellini as Gabriella, Ian Holm as Pascal, Campbell Scott as Bob, Allison Janney as Ann, Marc Anthony as Christiano, and Liev Schreiber as Leo
Directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott
Written by Stanley Tucci and Joseph TropianoAwards: 1996 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Best New Filmmaker (Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott) and Best Screenplay (Stanley Tucci and Joseph Tropiano); 1997 Independent Spirits Award for Best Screenplay (Tucci and Tropiano); 1998 London Critics Circle Film Award for British Supporting Actress of the Year (Minnie Driver); 1996 National Board of Review, U.S.A. Special Recognition Award; National Society of Film Critics Awards, U.S.A. for Best Supporting Actor (Tony Shalhoub); 1996 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best New Director (Tucci and Scott); 1996 Sundance Film Festival Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (Tucci and Tropiano)

(Thanks to Pete and Shirley Longshore for providing these photographs of the dinner we served.)

The Wedding Banquet

“Although you kids want to be modern, what is a wedding without a banquet?”
--Old Chen

As the name indicates, The Wedding Banquet features a large wedding reception dinner. In traditional Chinese style, the parents of the groom invite hundreds of guests to celebrate the nuptials of their only son. Little do the parents realize that the marriage is a matter of convenience, arranged so that the bride, Wei Wei, can get a green card to remain in the United States, and that their son the groom, Wai Tung, is not only gay but has been living with his partner, Simon, for many years. When the parents arrive from Taiwan to oversee the long-awaited wedding, the young trio are caught in a web of their own making that is at once agonizing and hilarious.

Wai Tung Gao: …we should have moved you out.
Simon: I’ll survive.
Wai Tung Gao: Not if Wei Wei keeps cooking.

Directed by Ang Lee, now known for his highly acclaimed films Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility, and The Ice Storm, The Wedding Banquet puts keen emotions, complicated situations, and finely wrought characters on display—not to mention some glorious food! The banquet itself features fresh shrimp and lobster, perfectly steamed, and served on a bed of rice and greens to each guest, plus a four-tier wedding cake. Other scenes show Simon trying to teach Wei Wei how to cook fried eggs, the mother preparing freshly squeezed orange juice, the family eating dinners that include shredded tofu or sushi or breakfasts that combine American and Chinese foods, Simon treating the newlyweds to restaurant meal of General Tao chicken and pan-fried fish at the best Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. Interestingly for non-Chinese viewers, when the bride and groom present themselves to the groom’s parents, his mother feeds the bride a traditional lotus soup (to “help” the couple have a son quickly).

Does anyone enjoy this wedding banquet? We'll leave it to viewers to find out for themselves.

Fun Fact:
In the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, director Ang Lee makes a cameo appearance in this film, portraying a guest at the wedding banquet.

Released August 4, 1993 in the U.S.A.
Written by Ang Lee and Neil Peng
Directed by Ang Lee
Original title: Xi yan
Starring Winston Chao as Wai Tung Gao, May Chin as Wei Wei, Mitchell Lichtenstein as Simon, Ah Lei Gua as Mrs. Gao, and Sihung Lung as Mr. Gao
Awards: 1992 Asia-Pacific Film Festival Best Film Award; 1993 Berlin International Film Festival Golden Berlin Bear Award; 1993 Deauville Film Festival Critics Award; 1994 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding (Independent) Film; 1993 Golden Horse Film Festival Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Sihung Lung), and Best Supporting Actress (Ah Lei Gua); 1999 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival Director’s Choice Award; 1993 Seattle International Film Festival Golden Space Needle Award for Best Director and Best Film