Last night we had our more-or-less-annual Oscar party. Last year’s got canceled due to illness, so I was hoping things would go better this time around. I never really know what to make food-wise for these parties, but I started coming up with pun-driven foodstuffs based on the ten Best Picture nominees, and, once I came up with six or so, I couldn’t really stop. Then, once I had all the puns and recipes in hand, I pretty much had to spend hours Photoshopping movie posters to make tiny little movie posters with the dish names to put on the table. This may have been a bit compulsive, but it looked nice. We had a pretty good turnout, which is always nice, and I figured I might as well document the food part at least.

District 9 Layer Dip No real recipe on this one, since it pretty much just involves pouring a lot of stuff into a dish. From bottom to top: refried beans, guacamole, green chilis, corn, salsa, black beans, black olives, chopped tomatoes. The ninth layer was shredded cheese, but, since I was trying to make things vegan-friendly, that got served on the side.

Inglourious Batards I worked off the Rustic Bread recipe I found here. I didn’t really mess with it at all. I used rye flour and generally stuck to the recipe. I think this is only the second time I’ve made bread from scratch, and it came out pretty well, though it’s a very dense bread. As long as the slices were thin, though, it was quite good.

A Tapenaducation I was kind of surprised to learn how many tapenade recipes include anchovy. Since I was trying to be vegan-friendly whenever possible, that wasn’t going to work. I found this recipe online, and, even though the picture didn’t look too great, I gave it a shot. I omitted the green olives and did all Kalamata. It took a little tweaking (more salt, more lemon juice), but was pretty delicious, especially on the batards.

The Hurt Latke I’ve certainly made latkes before, but I’ve never tried to make vegan ones. I found a few people online who reported some success making it with egg substitute, which we had on hand from a previous party. My usual problem in latke-making is that the potatoes are far too wet. I tried wringing them out as best I could and even let them sit in a warm oven for a while to dry them out, but it didn’t seem to help. They still turned out well, even if they finished so late it wasn’t quite bright enough to get a decent picture.

Upplesauce Pretty straightforward. Peeled and chopped up about three pounds of apples, dumped ‘em in a pot with a little water, and let it cook for about a half hour or so. At some point, I added cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice. Eventually, it turns into applesauce. Delicious. Good on latkes. Very popular with the tiny guests.

Crème Fraiche-ous I didn’t get a picture of this one, since it’s the only thing on the menu I didn’t prepare, beyond opening up a carton of crème fraiche and scooping it into a bowl. A lousy movie deserves a lousy dish, but I know people like sour cream-y things with their latkes.

Avatarts This was the first dish I made. Eleanor made the pie crust (since she makes a great pie crust), then I rolled out the dough and put it into a mini muffin tin and baked the shells. I used this recipe for the lemon filling, which was good but a lot more custardy than I was expecting. I ended up doubling the amount of lemon juice, since it just didn’t taste lemony enough. I chilled them overnight and, just before putting them out, I squirted a little whipped cream on them and topped them with a little lemon curd. Very tasty, but the whipped cream didn’t really hold up long at room temperature.

A Serious Flan I was going to go with a more traditional (one might say “serious”) flan recipe, but I was a little worried about removing them smoothly from the mini muffin tin I wanted to use. I found this one online, and it sounded delicious, as well as being written specifically for a mini muffin tin. This dish was totally surprising. When I poured it into the tins, it just looked like a cake batter. The top got all golden brown, and they just looked like cupcakes. I was convinced the recipe had gone completely wrong until I cut the first one out. I was totally not expecting the weird translucent, glowing yellow layer, but it was pretty neat looking.

7-Up in the Air Two bottles of 7-Up, half a bottle of Trader Joe’s unsweetened blueberry juice, many scoops of vegan coconut ice cream.

The Blind Sidecar Always good to have an alcoholic drink to go with the non-alcoholic one, so made up a pitcher of sidecars (Cognac, Gran Gala, lemon juice). I made about four cups, put it in the fridge, then mixed them up with ice to order, served up with an orange twist.

So, all in all, a significant amount of food, made even more significant by the various things brought by friends (sausage dip, carrot cake whoopie pies, cupcakes, hummus, apple and onion tart, etc.). I’m a little concerned about how I’m going to meet or surpass this next year.