Food Notes: 12/10
Soviet Wine, drinking mayonnaise, panettone, and more.
Not having had enough of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, my wife whipped up a batch of chunky homemade sauce to serve at the annual viewing of Love Actually, a tradition she has upheld for two decades.
As far as movies go, Love Actually isn’t very good for themed dinner parties. There’s not much food in the film, and what food we do see, doesn’t have a very good reputation. Colin, the wedding cater waiter, makes a bit of a mess trying to hit on the wedding’s caterer. He’s passing out “taste explosion” canapé when he tries chatting up a woman who turns out to be a chef.
I’ve attempted past menus where we cook food that is especially British, like cottage pie. It’s not all that inspiring. The easiest thing to do is celebrate Colin’s arrival in Wisconsin with Bud Lite, which we did have.
We did notice another British food this year. Kiera Knightly’s character brings over a slice of Banoffee Pie when she comes calling for footage of her wedding. To be honest, after dozens of viewings it was the first time I noticed she’s actually offering some kind of British dessert — only because it was featured in this season’s Bake Off. Since its filled with bananas, this one isn’t really for me, but there’s a recipe online if you want to try.
Ultimately we ended up cooking duck breasts, which at least seemed vaguely British, like supper in a Charles Dickens novel, served alongside a sausage stuffing and the above cranberry sauce. As is also tradition, I lived-Tweeted the viewing, this time on Bluesky.
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