This post may contain affiliate links and/or codes. You won’t pay anything extra, but I might make a commission.
Nobody in my family has ever shown any interest in having an Oscar viewing party, so when my daughter said she wanted to watch the Oscars and have party food, I just had to throw something together!
A couple days ago my daughter Fiona was watching TV and the Oscars were mentioned. “When are the Academy Awards?” she asked me. I told her they were on Sunday, and she got really excited. Nobody in my family (except for me) ever gets excited about the Academy Awards, so I don’t usually do anything other than sit on the couch and watch them. I’ve never thrown an Oscar viewing party. In fact, for a five-year stretch, I wasn’t even home for them, because they always happen on the Sunday of Disney Princess Half Marathon weekend, which I used to do! So by Sunday evening I was full of Advil and lying on a hotel bed eating room service and watching the Oscars by myself.
But someone is going to watch with me this year! I asked her if she wanted special food or just popcorn, and she said special food. I said I’d work out an Oscar-themed menu.
And then I completely forgot about it until this morning. Crap.
I want to make something for each movie that was nominated Best Picture, but since I’ve seen exactly one of the eight movies, the food couldn’t really be related to the movie’s plot.
Instead, I picked a recipe based on the main location of each movie. This was pretty slapdash research, so hopefully I got the locations right, and my recipe choices were based *heavily* on my own tastes and what I thought I could pull together tomorrow. I’m curious if I’ll actually get all eight dishes done!
It will just be the four of us (and I don’t think my son Jake will eat a single thing on this menu), so I’m going to make small portions of each dish (except for the cheese dip, because I will never make a small portion of cheese dip). Hopefully having less to prep will increase my odds of cooking it all. Once I’m done making my Oscar menu, if I have a chance, I’ll update this post with pictures of the dishes!
Oscar Party Menu
Black Panther
Black Panther is set in Wakanda, which is reportedly in East Africa. I love coconut, so when I searched for East African recipes, these little pieces of fried dough, called mandazi, caught my eye immediately, since they have shredded coconut in them!
BlacKkKlansman
BlacKkKlansman, a Spike Lee movie (how is this the first time he’s been nominated for Best Director??) is set in Colorado, and after browsing through recipe lists of Colorado foods, it became apparent that they really like green chilies there. (They also really like Rocky Mountain Oysters, but I’m not making those.) This Green Chile Dip looks deliciously cheesy and easy.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody is set mostly in London. I immediately thought of Bubble and Squeak, which I remember having at least once when I was very little (I think a friend of my mom’s who is British made it for us), and I loved it! I’m going to largely wing this one, since it’s supposed to be made out of leftovers, but I’m taking my inspiration from these two recipes: Traditional Bubble and Squeak and Bubble and Squeak.
The Favourite
The Favourite is set in 18th century England, and I immediately thought of something I’ve always wanted to mess around with: hot water crust pastry. I’ve seen it used a million times on “The Great British Bake Off” for savory pies, so I thought I’d use my own vegetable pie filling recipe with this recipe for hot water crust.
Green Book
Green Book is mostly a road movie, but some of it was set in New Orleans, and pretty much the entire thing was shot there. So I’m going with pralines, which I know my husband will love–he’s crazy for pecans!
Roma
Roma is set in Mexico City, and I could have gotten a lot more creative with Mexican food instead of something obvious. But Fiona loves churros, in fact they’re probably her favorite dessert, and I haven’t made them in ages.
A Star Is Born
A lot of A Star Is Born is set in Los Angeles, and I have a memory of Tim Robbins in The Player, sitting down in a fancy outdoor L.A. restaurant, ordering a Cobb Salad and being very picky about the glass for his drink, and then leaving before his food gets there. But since then I’ve associated Cobb Salad with L.A. Now, I don’t eat meat, and this salad has two kinds of meat in it, but I’m also feeding a couple of carnivores, so I’ll just make a separate one for myself without the chicken and bacon.
Vice
Most of Vice takes place in Washington, D.C., and while googling about D.C. foods something called Senate Bean Soup kept coming up. Apparently it’s on the menu every day at the Senate cafeteria. At first I ignored it because I wouldn’t be able to eat it (I’m vegetarian, and every recipe for it had a ham hock). But then I figured that I could just do a vegetarian version of Senate Bean Soup! I found this one, but I won’t be making it vegan.
And that’s it! I wasn’t able to do any of the prep today because all of the ingredients are coming from Fresh Direct tomorrow morning, so I’ll be in my own Oscar race to get all of this made!
UPDATE: I actually managed to make six out of the eight in time for the Oscars! And one more the next day.
The Mandazi were delicious, but puffed up much more than they should have, so I had to cook them for longer than I would have liked. And while the cardamom came through really well, we couldn’t taste the coconut at all, so I think I need to give these another try, but thinner and with more coconut.
Amazingly, I didn’t end up making the Green Chile Dip. I just didn’t get a chance! By the time I had time, we were all kind of done with food food and ready for dessert. I’ll probably make it tomorrow though, because it sounds delicious.
The Bubble and Squeak was meh. It needed a lot of seasoning. I could probably work on it and improve it, but there are better ways to use up leftover mashed potatoes.
I made the Hot Water Crust Vegetable Pie on Monday for lunch. On the one hand, the dough was a pain to roll out, and it wasn’t as tasty as a traditional pie crust. It was more crumbly than flaky, and didn’t taste buttery. On the other hand, it’s so pretty!
The Pralines were harder to make than I thought (you really have to move fast when it’s time to form them into the final candies), but I managed to make it work and they were absolutely delicious.
The Churros were fantastic. I could eat a million of them. It’s probably a good thing that I only made half a batch of dough.
The Cobb Salad was a hit! Technically I made two. I made the one in the picture exactly like the recipe, but then I also made a vegetarian one for myself with chickpeas and Morningstar Farms Strips instead of chicken and bacon. Seriously, it was one of the best salads I’ve ever had.
The Vegetarian Senate Bean Soup was incredibly quick and easy, yet flavorful. I used real butter, so mine wasn’t vegan. And while I don’t usually like foods that taste smoky, I did put in 1/8 teaspoon of liquid smoke, which gave it a nice flavor without being overwhelming. I’ll definitely be making that again.
UPDATE #2: I made the Green Chile Dip about a week after the rest, and it was pretty amazing!! I will definitely be making that for parties.
