2022 Oscar Party - Recipes

And the Best Oscar Entree goes to...YOU! Come and accept your award-winning chow and pass it around to your party guests so everyone has a taste of Oscar. Sit back and watch the Best Picture Oscar-nominated movie trailers below, and my Best Oscar Entrees, which are a feast for your eyes.

And click on any Best Oscar Entree nominee names to be directed to the original blog post for all the award-winning recipe prose and cinematic culinary imagery.

The first Best Oscar Entree nominee was inspired by Aussie director Jane Champion's revisionist tale of the Old West. Check out the trailer for Power of the Dog.

1. Power of the Hot Dog - Greasy chili and sweet pickle relish clash but realize they really belong together in the end.

The second Best Oscar Entree nominee goes with the noirish Nightmare Alley. It is a dark and disturbing tale by macabre master Mexican director  Guillermo del Toro.

2. Nightmare Alley Tacos - Come accompany this Chef of the Night as he goes deep into the smokey neon-lit alleyways of Los Angeles. There lurk unlicensed vendors dispensing mind-bending street tacos!

The third Best Oscar Entree nominee is by way of Licorice Pizza from auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson. The flick is about an ambitious teen boy and his crush on an older 20-something lady and takes place in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. 

3. Licorice Pizza with Egg - Valley girls and boys revel in sweltering summers so hot the sidewalks could fry an...

The fourth Best Oscar Entree nominee is based on Oscar-nominated King Richard, with powerful leading actor Will Smith at the helm. I happen to live right down the street from the high school tennis courts Venus and Serena Williams trained on.

4. King Cake Richard - From their infancy, a father strives to shape his 2 talented daughters into heroic and historic tennis players.

The fifth Best Oscar Entree nominee is a filling riff on Belfast. This Oscar contender is by theater actor and director Kenneth Branagh. The film is an autobiographical slice of Irish life during the battles between Catholics and Protestants in the 1960s. 

5. Belfast Shepherd's Pie - The story of a family in tumultuous Belfast, Ireland, that's also as heartwarming as a serving of mashed potatoes, beef, gravy, and peas.

The sixth Best Oscar Entree nominee is based on the movie Dune. This sci-fi literary classic adaptation is a hero's journey on a desert planet full of sandstorms and fury.

6. The Dune Lollipop - This Cheap$kate Space Cadet ingests a Scorpion Lollipop, trips out, and hitches a ride on a spaceship!

The seventh Best Oscar Entree nominee is based on CODA. This Oscar contender has a chorus of accolades and tells of a deaf fisherman family with a hearing daughter. Should she stay home to help or should she go? 

7. CODA Fried Fish - This fish-out-of-water story of a working-class gal finding her passion in music. Does she stay to help her family's fishing business or leave to pursue her music dreams?

The eighth Best Oscar Entree nominee is a 2fer based on West Side Story by Steven Spielberg. Two NYC gangs battle with a tragic outcome. Its creatively choreographed dance and classic show tunes retain the power of the original 1960s movie. 

8. West Sides Story - Plantains & Yuca are sides that will dance your taste buds.

Yuca & Mojo Sauce

Fried Plantains

The ninth Best Oscar Entree nominee is a big ball of deliciousness based on Don't Look Up. A meteor is on course to crash into Earth in this satirical doomsday flick.

Don't Look Up Meatball - Look up in the sky, is it a meteor or just a food-borne hallucination?

The final Best Oscar Entree nominee is my homage to Drive My Car. Originating from a short story by renowned Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, the movie cruises down memory, love, and loss to acceptance.

Drive My Car Daiquiri - You may need to pick up a drive-thru Daiquiri to take on this gabfest of a movie.

Do try any of my Oscar Party Entrees - you're sure to get a Standing O. So have your acceptance speech ready because the golden statuette for Best Entree at an Oscar Party belongs to you, the host with the most.

I'll leave you with a video I made a while ago when the Academy of Motion Pictures had an exhibit with a podium on which a real Oscar stood. All you had to do was stand in line and take a picture with it -- well, you can be sure I showed up for that! Just check out the video below:

May the Best Entree win!!

2017 Christmas GIF(t)s

HO HO HO & Merry Christmas! This Cheap$kate Santa comes bearing GIFs not gifts, but you don't have to wait until the early morning of December 25th to open your pictorial presents!

'Tis the time of year where I set the table with a cornucopia of eye-popping delights for you to indulge in.

Have you been bad or good this year? Well, I'm not judgmental whether you've been a do-gooder or the naughty type, so read on.

While not a brightly wrapped package sitting under the Christmas tree waiting to be opened, you can watch my GIFs anytime. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just check out the animations below for an eyeful.

Cuban-style Black Beans with Rice

The letters, GIF, stands for Graphics Interchange Format and is a short video, graphic, or photo clip, that play in a loop, that is, it keeps repeating. There is usually no audio and the clips last for a few seconds each. You can read all about a GIF by clicking here.

I use GIFS to show a cooking technique; how a recipe looks as it bakes, fries or boils; the slicing or chopping of an ingredient; and sometimes I make them just for fun.

Plantain - Fried Banana Recipe

So keep on scrolling and feast your eyes on my 2017 roundup of GIFs past. And click on any recipe name to see the scrumptious recipe/review blog post. Happy Holidays!

Mom's Cajun Potato Salad

Boiled Egg Recipes

Baked Chicken with Rosemary

Quick Pizza with Egg

Oyster Mushrooms Sauteed in Butter

Nathan's Hot Dog - Cheap$kate Review

Salted Caramel Ultimate Dessert Bar - Cheap$kate Review

Tomato Season Recipes

Grilled Fish

Sauteed Crookneck Squash

Mexican-style Pinto Beans

Fresh Boiled Corn

Grilled Sweet Potato

Denise's Turkey Gumbo - Thanksgiving Leftovers Recipes

Sweet Fried Plantains (Latin bananas) - Video Recipe

Black is beautiful for the sweetest Fried Plantains. Different than regular grocery store varieties - the kind you slice into your breakfast cereal or blend into a smoothie - plantains have to be cooked, and they are usually fried like French fries. Check out my recipe video to see how easy it is to make.

I first tried them dining in local Cuban Restaurants Versailles and El Cochinito. It was surprising to see my dinner order of meat, rice, and black beans, with Sweet Fried Plantains on the same plate. It's a nice contrast to a heavy meal of protein and carbs. And yes, this dessert-like side goes deliciously with the entree.

Plantains are popular in South and Central America, the Caribbean, as well as parts of Mexico. They are even grown in Africa, Australia and Asia. The leaves are also used for roasting meat, like my Hawaiian Kalua Pig recipe, here.

Maybe you've accidentally bought a plantain thinking it was a regular banana? If you bite into a peeled one, you will get a mouthful of bitterness, but fry up a batch and and you will be surprised how mild they become.

Plantains can be cooked during any part of the ripening stages. Frying green plantains yields a potato-like flavor - it's not sweet, but not bitter either. A yellow plantain is semi-sweet. Waiting for a plantain to turn completely black yields the sweetest flavor. Even at it's blackest, the inner flesh stays yellow and soft.

So you can match your taste preference to the color of a plantain. They are usually sold green, but you can find them at almost any ripened stage. A green plantain can take a couple of weeks to reach max ripeness.

It's an easy and quick dish to make; the only hard part is finding plantains. I go to my local Latin market where they sell for 50 cents to a $1 per pound, just the right price for this El Tightwad Cuisiner. Since the majority of the Los Angeles populace is Latino, I find that plantains are carried in almost every large supermarket or neighborhood bodega. I even get plantains from my local 99c only Store.

Surprisingly, even store-bought frozen cooked plantains reheat quite well. I've tried a couple different brands and they microwave perfectly, staying moist and sweet. If you've never tried Sweet Fried Plantains before, this is a sure-fire way to see if you like them.

For cooking plantains, just peel and slice. I slice them thick, and at an angle so they are a little longer than straight cuts.

Fry plantains in oil like you would for french fries, and they only need to be lightly brown. You do have to watch the ripened black plantains closely when cooking -- because of their high sugar content they can burn. Plantains at the market can be quite large, and just one makes enough for a serving or two.

This is a perfect side for my Cuban recipe entrees like: Roast Pork, Cuban Sandwich, or just plain Black Beans and White (or brown) Rice.

Next time you make a Latin-themed meal, try adding a few slices of Sweet Fried Plantains to the plate for a taste of candied perfection.

 Sweet Fried Plantains - VIDEO

Play it here, video runs 49 seconds.

My YouTube video link for viewing or embedding, just click here. 

Ingredients (about 2 servings per plantain)

• 1 black plantain - It can be black or partially black and yellow. The blacker the plantain the sweeter.
• 1/2 inch deep vegetable oil for frying - may need to add  more depending how many plantains you fry.

Directions
Peel and slice the plantain. A plantain stem is quite tough so you may need to just slice it off where the plantain flesh starts. You may be able to then peel the plantain easier. It's okay to slice into the peel lengthwise from end to end, if it is too tough. The plantain flesh will be firm, but with a little give.

 Click on any photo to see larger.

Once the plantain is peeled, I like to make slices at a diagonal, so each piece is about three inches long, and about one inch thick. Go for a fairly thick piece, but it will be fine anyway you slice it!

Add oil to a medium sized pan or pot. You want the oil to be about half an inch to an inch deep. You don't need the temperature to be as hot as you would for making  French fries, but go with a medium temperature, so you can easily watch that the banana slices don't burn. You may need to add more oil as you fry, if you are cooking more than one plantain.

When frying go for a medium brown color. You will need to watch closely toward the end, as brown can turn to black and burn quickly. Cooking time will vary depending how hot the oil gets. Drain on a paper towel and serve warm.