Harry Potter

A Harry Potter Movie Night, complete with a movie, british food, and a HP painting.

My tribute to HP:

  

Not bad for a novice…

 

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: 

 Review: This movie doesn’t need a review. It’s a GIANT book series and an even bigger movie franchise. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re the only one. Git it together! It still amazes me that these guys were around ten years old, and were able to pull this off. This is a 5 star movie if I’ve ever seen one. And that’s all I have to say about it.

Rating: 5 stars out of 5.

The food:

  

All of these items were mentioned in Harry Potter at some point and are british specialties.

Treacle tart: I thought this recipe sounded awful before I made it. I was not wrong. It’s a super strong-tasting molasses pie. Not good.

  

Crumpets: It’s a much more doughy form of a pancake? Not bad, but really it’s just a fancy pancake.

Click to access crumpets_61013.pdf

French Fancies: Spongecake with many layers of icing. The trick with this one is trying to get the right consistancies for the icing. It took me a few tries. Really sweet, but in a good way. The cake absorbs the icing (Like a sponge!).

  

Spongecake: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Egg-Yolk-Sponge-Cake/Detail.aspx?evt19=1&referringHubId=17095&scale=7&ismetric=0

Sticky Toffee Pudding: A “pudding” made with dates? I didn’t think I’d like this one, but it was my favorite. You can’t really taste the dates, and the toffee is so good.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/sticky-toffee-pudding-380598

  

And no Harry Potter movie night would be complete without BUTTERBEER.

The recipe is accurate, but it wasn’t a huge favorite of mine. If you’ve had it and liked it, this is THE recipe.

http://wizardingworldpark.com/butterbeer-recipes/

   

 

French Movie Night

Movie: French theme, French movie. Amelie.

Review: It’s the story of a girl who finds a box of toys in her apartment and decides to return them to their owner, thus starting a pattern of good deeds. Firstly, the film is entirely in french. There are subtitles! When I started watching and I realized it was going to be 100% in french, I didn’t think I’d make it ten minutes. It was actually surprisingly good. There were no rules for this film. Anything could happen. The way this shy girl who barely even spoke throughout the film managed such dramatic scenes, it was pretty brilliant. The story is far-fetched, and the sequel to this would be something like “Couple breaks up after first conversation”, but it was fairly interesting, nonetheless.

Rating: 4 1/4 stars out of 5. (Can I do that?)

Food: 

All this food was pretty amazing. Maybe I should move to France? (Count me out on the snails though)

Duck L’orange: Eatable, it was okay. Recipe was a bit difficult, duck would not have cooked in the time alotted, but it was alright. Unlikely to make again.

Baguette: Very good. Tastes like any I’ve bought in store.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/homemade-french-baguettes.html

Mille-Feuille: I made this COMPLETELY from scratch. I would suggest to anyone who tries making this, don’t make the puff pastry dough. Just buy it. It took way too long and was way too much work. Just buy it.

So it’s three strips of pastry with custard in between and icing on top. I had this in a french bakery before, and while my version my not be EXACTLY like the ones I bought, it’s pretty darn close. It’s really sweet, but yeah, I’ll make this again. You could use your own custard recipe if you wanted to be lazy, it would probably taste just as good. The icing is pretty simple, I wouldn’t change it.

http://www.culinarycoutureblog.com/2014/04/classic-french-napoleon-mille-feuille.html

My drink tonight was a classic Shirley Temple. Simple enough. Ice, OJ, Soda, Grenadine. If you forget, they even put the recipe on the bottle for ya. Very good. I’ve been drinking these all night.

My favorite though was the soup. Mussel and Fennel Bisque. I had a bit of trouble with the pureeing part of the process, but it actually wasn’t that hard to make besides that. VERY VERY tasty. Very rich, very filling. Can’t wait to make this again.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/mussel-and-fennel-bisque-351036

And once again, someone just doesn’t the movie. He did get to see another cat though!