Movie Menus

February 2, 2004
Thanks to this captivating collection of recipes, movie trivia and culinary history, plain popcorn will have a hard time cutting it as a movie snack again. Food historian Segan (Shakespeare's Kitchen: Recipes for the Contemporary Cook) splits her time between Italy and New York City, and the recipes she chooses for this volume are as sophisticated as one might expect. She organizes her book by film genres and eras, including"The Gilded Age,""The Wild West,""Family Movie Night" and"Gangsters to Greasers." For each theme, Segan lists two dozen or more film suggestions, from the obscure to Oscar winners; recipes for appetizers, main dishes and desserts; and film trivia and humorous quotes, such as Cary Grant's famous"Insanity runs in my family...it practically gallops" (from Arsenic and Old Lace). Most recipes are relatively simple to prepare, and many are taken from the first cookbooks in which they ever appeared (the Peach Melba is French chef Auguste Escoffier's late-19th-century original; Courage Tart, an Elizabethan aphrodisiac, comes from a book written in 1587). Some foodie/film buffs will be looking for a timpani recipe to duplicate the one featured in the 1996 Stanley Tucci/Isabella Rossellini film Big Night, but its unfortunate absence is probably the only quibble they'll have with the volume.

March 1, 2004
Thanks to this captivating collection of recipes, movie trivia and culinary history, plain popcorn will have a hard time cutting it as a movie snack again. Food historian Segan (Shakespeare's Kitchen: Recipes for the Contemporary Cook) splits her time between Italy and New York City, and the recipes she chooses for this volume are as sophisticated as one might expect. She organizes her book by film genres and eras, including"The Gilded Age,""The Wild West,""Family Movie Night" and"Gangsters to Greasers." For each theme, Segan lists two dozen or more film suggestions, from the obscure to Oscar winners; recipes for appetizers, main dishes and desserts; and film trivia and humorous quotes, such as Cary Grant's famous"Insanity runs in my family...it practically gallops" (from Arsenic and Old Lace). Most recipes are relatively simple to prepare, and many are taken from the first cookbooks in which they ever appeared (the Peach Melba is French chef Auguste Escoffier's late-19th-century original; Courage Tart, an Elizabethan aphrodisiac, comes from a book written in 1587). Some foodie/film buffs will be looking for a timpani recipe to duplicate the one featured in the 1996 Stanley Tucci/Isabella Rossellini film Big Night, but its unfortunate absence is probably the only quibble they'll have with the volume.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.