My moonstruck dinner party

So I am looking through the list of Plinky Prompts and this one caught my eye…

Make a menu for a dinner party based on a favorite movie.

Obvious movie choices like Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, Julie and Julia, all come to mind, but one of my all time favourite feel-good films is the 1987 Cher and Nicholas Cage movie, Moonstruck.   It is a warm, funny charming and endearing romantic comedy about love and life set in New York City’s Italian-American community. The plot concerns widowed Loretta Castorini,  (played by Cher), engaged to unexciting mama’s boy, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). With her wedding just weeks away, she falls hopelessly in love with her fiance’s estranged younger brother, Ronny (Cage).  Her love dilemma plays out against the enchanting background of New York, the music of Puccini, Italian diners and her eccentric family (her mother played by Olympia Dukakis is particularly good).

So what else for a Moonstruck themed dinner party but an Italian feast. For starters I would serve a selection of delicious antipasti…olives, sundried tomatoes, bruschetta….

The main would of course feature a pasta dish. So much to choose from. I have recently been introduced by some of my American blogger friends to a chef called Giada De Laurentiis. Born in Rome, granddaughter of film producer Dino De Laurentiis, Giada grew up in a large Italian family where the culture of food was a staple in and of itself. So I would turn to Giada for my dinner party inspiration. I am tempted to try her Chicken Tetrazzini for my movie themed dinner party. I had never heard of this dish before, but Wikipedia tells me that it is a dish usually involving chicken, turkey or seafood, mushrooms, and almonds in a butter/cream and parmesan sauce flavored with wine or sherry and stock vegetables such as onions, celery, and carrots. It is often served hot over spaghetti or some similarly thin pasta, garnished with lemon or parsley, and topped with additional almonds and/or Parmesan cheese. The dish is named after the Italian opera star Luisa Tetrazzini.

And for dessert, I would serve an orange polenta cake, warm from the oven with a dollop of ice-cream.  Polenta was originally a peasant food and as Italian cuisine has been traditionally characterised as being the food of the peasant (in a rustic homely way) so polenta seems the perfect choice for my movie themed menu. 

So how about you? What movie themed menu would you choose?