BD 52 // Inside Out — Battle Dinner

Mar 2

Mar 2 BD 52 // Inside Out

When we pulled the movie theme Animated out of the hat, our team (Laura + Fred) had a pretty narrow list of what we wanted to pick. We didn’t want a kid movie but thankfully there are plenty of fun animated features that work for everyone. We picked Inside Out because it had a great Rotten Tomatoes score [98%], we could rent it and we hadn’t seen it.

How do you build a themed dinner around a movie you’ve never seen?

That’s part of the fun! We watch the trailers and do a little research. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had items in the movie the match with the food choices when we had NO idea they were there. The Hidden Figures battle was probably the best one. Oh Snap!.. Check out the blog post for what happened, and yes, that’s a clue.

THE REVEAL

We adopted the “slow reveal” menu concept a few dinners ago and it really makes it a blast. We used to show the whole menu right up front but now we show each “course” as it’s being prepared. That way the visitors are piecing together the clues throughout the course of the dinner.

THE DRINK

The movie is set in San Francisco so we chose the Cable Car, which is a modified version of the classic Side Car recipe.

APPETIZER and THE GUESS

Yeah… this wasn’t “guesses” - they got it right after the appetizer. As I was working on the side and main dishes, I could hear Dan saying Inside Out so I knew this wouldn’t take long. Apparently the Rainbow Crudités was too obvious! Of course, the idea is for them to be able to guess what it is so this means we must have done a decent job.

Was this clue too easy? Rainbow Crudités = Inside Out — Was this clue too easy? Rainbow Crudités = *Inside Out*

This was soooo easy and I used the Blendtec instead of a food processor just for ease of cleanup. I’m always amazed by how versatile that blender is. Yes, it’s a premium blender but we use it every day and it is a total workhorse worth every penny.

This “recipe” came from Sue @ TVFGI - The View from Great Island

Dip - Feta with roasted red peppers and garlic
Veggies - Pavilions had a GREAT selection of veg.

BTW, is it crudités or Crudité?

SIDE

Duck Fat Fried Rice might not seem like an obvious tie-in but when we watched the previews, there is a scene where the family is eating Chinese takeout so we directly pulled from that scene. But why duck fat? OK… the “duck” was somewhat of a red herring and didn’t directly correlate to the movie but one of the points of doing these dinners is to give us an excuse to try different or unexpected things.

I had an amazing duck fat fried rice in Dallas at a test kitchen and I raced home and tried to replicate it (pretty successfully IMHO). Anyone who’s made fried rice knows it’s one of those "leftover junk” dishes where anything goes, but I leaned heavily on this Fried Rice recipe from @jostrander on allrecipes.com. I simply substituted duck fat for the oil. The duck fat gives it a rich flavor that is very complimentary to the saltiness of the soy sauce.

Didn’t know you can buy duck fat? I purchased a jar of Rougie brand (which was sold out as I’m posting this) but I purchased it at a local specialty market. Here’s a link to an Amazon search for “duck fat.”

A critical note on making fried rice - you MUST make the rice the day before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. This dehydrates it a bit and makes for a better, crispier texture that allows the rice to absorb the flavors of the fat and sauce. I used a Zojirushi rice cooker but any method will work.

MAIN

Sweet and Sour Pork was an obvious choice for Inside Out since 1) It literally has emotions in the name, and 2) They were eating Chinese takeout. I’d also never made it and it appeared to be somewhat easy to make for a dinner party without timing issues.

I used the recipe Sweet and Sour Pork III from @PAM_1 on allrecipes.com and it did not disappoint!

For the sauce I cheated a bit. I used a few drops of red food coloring to give it that “American” look.

DESSERT

Coincidentally, one of our guests (Dan) was turning 53 and since this was our 52nd Battle Dinner, you know we had to call this out! Dan loves coffee so I scoured google for the perfect cake. I actually ended up combining two recipes to really punch up the coffee theme.

This was THE BEST CAKE I’VE EVER MADE!

Full disclosure… I’m not a super skilled baker, but our guest, Bev, is and if she says it is amazing… I’ll take that credit! Thanks Bev.

Here are the the two recipes and what parts I pulled from them:

Coffee-Chocolate Layer Cake with Mocha-Mascarpone Frosting from BON APPÉTIT
- Cake layers
- Mocha-Mascarpone outer frosting
Coffee Layer Cake from Annalise at Completely Delicious
- Coffee Buttercream layer frosting

I lean heavily on reviews when researching for the right recipe and I even built a spreadsheet to compare the cake parts between the recipes. I settled on using the BON APPÉTIT recipe because I liked that it used buttermilk and espresso powder vs sour cream and coffee. I’m sure Annalise’s cake is amazing too!

I also liked the look of the super dark cake and frosting but in the reviews people had commented that the picture showed the mascarpone frosting as really dark and it’s not. I can attest to that but I did consider adding some black food coloring but I didn’t have any on hand and didn’t want to make another supply run.

I hope you enjoyed the recap and try these recipes for yourself, or expand on them! I’d love to hear your thoughts on modifying, substituting or doing your own Battle Dinner!