Cooking and Criterions
A flash sale special
I had a houseguest recently ask why the precious mantle space in my New York apartment goes to housing a row of Blu-Ray discs organized particularly by their spine number. Real ones know — the Criterion Collection is the ultimate in-group virtue signal to other cinephiles.
The Criterion Collection, for lack of a better term, is the canon of cinema. That makes it as susceptible to blindspots as any other attempt to chronicle the most notable works in any art form. But the curved “C” is a good indication that you’re watching a movie that will make you think and feel something — and is worth serious consideration.
The 61 films from the Collection that I own are all ones that I think are worth watching again and again. The discs go beyond just streaming to deliver not just the feature itself but also serves up some tremendous supplemental content that helps to further contextualize and explain the film. (Hearing Martin Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker break down Raging Bull in the audio commentary is a full semester’s worth of cinema studies.)
And what better way to enjoy a movie like a Criterion Collection selection than alongside a great meal? Make it a movie night in and pair a Criterion film with some home cooking from one of the recipes below. I’ve been working on this newsletter for well over a year now and am excited to deploy when the Criterion Collection is offering a 50% flash sale until 12 PM ET on Wednesday, October 18.
APPETIZERS
Enjoy the maternal melodrama All About My Mother, written and directed by Spain’s pride and joy Pedro Almodóvar, alongside smoky-roasted chickpeas! If you like the flavor of patatas bravas when you’re ordering tapas, this will give you all the same richness with a little bit less guilt. The recipe also works well with cauliflower florets, too.
Celebrate a little taste of France just like Greta Gerwig’s titular character in Frances Ha with gougères! These simple cheese puffs require very few ingredients, and the dough freezes quite well. Convince yourself that you’re fancier than you are with these indulgences — their pockets of air are not unlike the protagonist’s head at some times, too.
MAINS
You’ve got the time with Martin Scorsese’s mournful gangster epic The Irishman and it’s three-and-a-half-hour runtime. Why not make a slow-cooker lasagna that’s as full of layers as his late period masterpiece? Make it even more Italian by adding some cooked sausage, too.
The origins of popular Indian dish chicken tikka masala is frequently disputed, with many attributing it to the Westerners who colonized the country. So why not mark that clash of cultures and acknowledge the collision of narratives? Pair Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, a film that is far more self-aware than people realize about how foreigners use the country as a backdrop for their failed narratives of self-help, with a delicious Instant Pot chicken tikka masala.
How fitting that Preston Sturges’ screwball comedy classic The Lady Eve should so prominently feature the apple given the Biblical story alluded to in its name. Like any great rom-com, it’s an ideal mixture of sweet and cheesy … just like a grilled cheese with apple and apple butter. I am not usually the type to mix these flavor pallettes, so let me just say that this was a surprisingly tasty treat for the taste buds.
Breaking up is hard to do, as the quarreling couple in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story prove. Find a little bit of harmony in your bowl by chowing down on a hearty split pea soup with bacon. Like Baumbach’s gentle and unexpected compassion breaking through the meme-able fights, the smokiness of this stew makes something as unpleasant as eating your veggies go down easier.
What is Belgian cinema? Or Belgian cuisine? Find some synchrony by pairing a famous national dish with the country’s most important filmmakers. A beer-braised beef and onions is not entirely unlike social realist masters Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Kid with a Bake: hearty, homey, rich, a bit tough, but overwhelmingly in its softness by the end.
It’s hard to go wrong with any of the films in Essential Fellini, the massive Criterion box set capturing the greatest hits of Italian maestro Federico Fellini. You’ll see his fingerprints all over the last half-century cinema by encountering any of his many masterworks. I’d recommend taking in Nights of Cabiria or 8 1/2 with an equally sumptous piece of Italian flair: a simple, sturdy cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes and cannelini beans. Great for any vegetarians reading this, an audience to whom I have not thrown many bones here. (Sorry!)
DESSERTS
Katharine Hepburn has a famous brownie recipe that matches her dynamite screen persona. Devour them alongside Howard Hawks’ uproarious screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, a film that makes laugh riotously each time I rewatch it. 85 years later, it’s still got the juice!
I don’t have to tell you about Bong Joon-ho’s game-changing Best Picture winner Parasite. (Right? RIGHT?!) So let me just propose that you play out the journey of the movie on your taste buds with these sinfully delicious gochujang caramel cookies. Get the sugar rush of genius genre filmmaking in the caramel, and then let the spice of the gochujang come knock you out when you’re least expecting it.
To quote the second-degree inspiration for my entire film writing career…
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall