Pair your eats and drinks with a favorite flick

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February 11, 2009

Times Leader Features Staff

In this economy, during this bleak winter, perhaps your credit cards, by choice, are as frozen as the ground beneath your feet. If you do stay in for Valentine’s Day and snuggle up in front of a video or the television, you can toast love (or the lack thereof) with eats and drinks inspired by a whole host of comfort flicks. Here are some staff picks and pairings:

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Stellar performances, action, comedy, music, adventure and romance mean Blake Edwards’ “The Great Race” has it all.

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis reteamed more than a decade after “Some Like It Hot” for this lavish award-winning comedy from 1965 about a turn-of-the-century automobile race from New York to Paris by way of the Bering Strait and Russia.

Curtis as The Great Leslie, a twinkling-tooth daredevil dressed in white, and Professor Fate, his dressed-in-black, Snidely Whiplash-like bumbling archrival, are a hoot. Natalie Wood co-stars as the damsel in distress, but don’t call this ambitious newspaper reporter and feminist that. Peter Falk serves up a hilarious turn as Professor Fate’s sidekick, Max, and baby boomers may recognize several other faces in this gem, which runs more than two hours.

You can rent the film through Amazon’s Video on Demand feature for less than $5. Copies on DVD are in stock for purchase for a few dollars more at Barnes & Noble, Arena Hub Plaza, Wilkes-Barre Township, according to www.barnesandnoble.com.

A menu of hot dogs and french fries will represent the race’s start and finish lines justly, and readers already familiar with the film understand why pie is the perfect dessert.

Aside from “He’s Just Not That into You,” now in theaters, films on TV today touch on the concept of perhaps she’s just not that into him. This point is approached in 2003’s light romantic comedy “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. According to http://tv.yahoo.com the film airs at 3:38 p.m. on USA for early diners. Andie Anderson (Hudson) and Benjamin Barry (McConaughey) cross paths after each makes bets with others to further their individual careers. Keep an eye out for the bathroom scene and “Krull.” It’s the type of film Doris Day and Rock Hudson, no relation to Kate, would have been offered in their heydays.

Speaking of Day and Hudson, “Deliver Us from Eva” from 2003 stars LL Cool J and Gabrielle Union, who in my opinion have the chemistry to remake every Doris Day-Rock Hudson film ever made. This mild romp has Union playing the controlling and meddling “Eva” to LL’s womanizing “Ray.”

Eva’s relations think they know what their beloved family member needs, and to stop her from hounding them they enlist Ray for a fee -- unbeknownst to Eva.

The DVD is in stock for less than $15, or get “Eva” in a trio that includes the 2006 dramatic romance “Something New” and 1999’s comedy drama “The Best Man” for less than $20 at Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre Township, according the retailer’s Web site.

Hidden agendas call for hidden deliciousness using a technique the French call en papillote. Parchment paper is traditionally used but here’s a healthy version using aluminum foil courtesy of www.reynoldskitchens.com.

Chicken Florentine

2 sheets (12x18 inches each) ReynoldsWrap� Release� Non-Stick Foil

2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (4 to 6 oz. each)

1 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup sliced mushrooms

6 Roma tomatoes, quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil vinaigrette

Preheat oven to 450�F or grill to medium-high.

Center one chicken breast half on each sheet of ReynoldsWrap Release Non-Stick Foil with non-stick (dull) side toward food. Sprinkle chicken with basil and salt. Top chicken with mushrooms and tomatoes. Drizzle with vinaigrette.

Bring up foil sides. Double fold top and ends to seal packet, leaving room for heat circulation inside. Repeat to make two packets.

Bake 18 to 20 minutes on a cookie sheet in oven or grill 12 to 14 minutes in covered grill until meat thermometer reads 170�F.

SERVING SUGGESTION: Serve on fresh spinach leaves and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, if desired. Number of Servings: 2

Now, let us turn our attention to baked goods. A good man, at least according to the Italians, is a piece of bread, “plain, simple and always welcome.” How about that for the main metaphor in a gorgeous, if undervalued, indie film that melted hearts in the Iron City in 2000? If you’re as hungry for a beautiful, atypical love story as for a decadent feast on Valentine’s Day, “The Bread, My Sweet” is positively delicious.

The poignant tear-jerker (renamed “A Wedding For Bella” for DVD release) is set in the Italian-American Strip District of Pittsburgh and is a homage to homemade food as much as home-grown love, classic, enduring and entirely unconventional alike.

Scott Baio stars as Dom Pyzola, a corporate raider who ditches his soul-sucking job to commit himself to the bakery he runs on the side. He’s as dedicated to buon pane (and his never-from-a mix biscotti) as he is to the dying mother figure (Rosemary Prinz as Bella) who lives above the shop with her devoted, crusty (as bread) husband Massimo (John Seitz).

Many will see the coffee cans full of money Bella and Massimo have been setting aside for daughter Lucca’s wedding since her birth and quickly predict what’s about to happen, but that’s cool. What’s comfort without predictability?

Even if you figure this out all too quickly, sit back and savor anyway. You’ll no doubt find yourself hungry for a mound of meatballs atop an enormous plate of spaghetti, or maybe a mile-high “sangwich,” and craving a glass of homemade red wine to wash it all down. (But store-bought will certainly do.) As you watch Dom close the most outrageous deal of his life, close this Valentine’s Day deal of your own with a tiny homemade pie (watch the movie to see why the pie really should, alas, be tiny) or a from-scratch biscotti. For an easy enough recipe, try www.biscottizone.com.

“The Bread, My Sweet”/“A Wedding For Bella” is available on Netflix and at selected rental locations. Call ahead to check.

Finally, there’s not a Jane Austen adaptation that wouldn’t suit the mood this weekend. Mr. Darcy (“Pride & Prejudice”); Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon (“Sense & Sensibility); George Knightley (“Emma”); and Capt. Wentworth (“Persuasion”) -- gentlemen all.

Their lady loves surely smiled to see them striding across the field, top hats in place and long coats swirling about their boots, with dinner in hand. For where would the men be without the pursuit of game?

Roast Cornish game hens for two, seasoned with traditional rosemary for remembrance, recall the era without the bother of plucking the feathers.

A good old-fashioned pound cake will finish things nicely.

Should you require a bit more spice, consider “Bride & Prejudice.” This 2004 Bollywood film puts some sass into the “P&P” tale, with glitzy, energetic dance numbers and soaring love ballads. Then there’s “No Life Without Wife,” a side-splitting song and dance speculating about a union with uncouth (but rich) Americanized relative Mr. Kohli.

“Bride,” available at area Blockbuster stores, stars Aishwarya Rai as Lalita and Martin Henderson as William Darcy. Naveen Andrews, of “Lost” fame, co-stars as Balraj Bingley.

For an easy, zesty dinner, try Curried Chicken Stew at landolakes.com. You can skip the potatoes and serve it over rice if you choose, and most ingredients are probably already in your kitchen. Banana or coconut cream pie will be a simply sweet finish.

— Michele Harris — Josephine Campbell