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Week 4
Our Sharing Day:
Last week I referred to Mary Frances Fisher. I explained that she was a well-known Food writer. In the”Art of Eating”she explains her interest:
“People ask me: Why do you write about food and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?
They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honour of my craft.
The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it…and it is all one.”
Mary Frances Fisher often denied being a food writer, claiming that she was a writer about bigger things.
Mary Frances Fisher
“Tampopo”is a 1985 ‘ramen western’. These words are a play on the idea of spaghetti westerns. That’s the films made by Italian production studios about the American Wild West.
This film also parodies stereotypical American movie themes, characters and shots. The main narrative of the film is interspersed with stories about food, on several levels.
When released it was considered to be”bemused meditation on human nature in which one humorous situation flows into another, offhandedly, as if life were a series of similes.”
“A good bowl of ramen is a marriage of four things: Tonkotsu, bone broth, tare (seasoning), noodles and toppings”.
How to eat Ramen
“The Hundred Foot Journey”, 2014, stars Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon. Stephen Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey produced it.
It is a culinary fairy-tale set in France, involving two proprietors of restaurants. The traditional French Restaurant,”Le Saule Pleureur”( the weeping willow,) is concerned with maintaining Michelin stars and maintaining correct standards while the”Maison Mumbai”, established by asylum seekers from India is colourful, happy and different. From the first, the successful chef of the traditional establishment makes her attitudes to cooking clear. She also exposes her prejudices and her fragilities.
The author of the book that the film is based on, says, that the title of a hundred feet refers to the gulf between the desires and cultures of the characters represented in this story.
The Hundred Foot Journey was extensively shot at scenic places in the Midi-Pyrenees. Before actual filming, two of the main actors spent a considerable amount of time going to restaurants and observing and learning in kitchens.
The main message of the film is:
“The bonding of two cultures can be fused together through cooking”.
I am a simple soul. Although it was predictable I enjoyed the film very much but film critic, Kenneth Turan, said that he wished”the film had more of the messy juices of life flowing through its veins”.
The Hundred Foot Journey
This is a recipe for omelettes as seen in the film:
Omelette
Now for a little history:
The history of royal wedding cakes
Delicatessen:
Delicatessen was made in 1992. It can be classified as an art-house comedy, but it is very dark and not to everybody’s taste, pardon the pun.
It is a doomsday film, set at a time when meat is scarce and cannibalism is no longer unsavoury. Despite this it is funny and a fantasy.
The action mostly takes place in an apartment above a butcher’s shop. When an ex-clown takes a job in a dilapidated delicatessen, he has no idea of the butcher’s plans which I won’t tell you either. However when the butcher’s daughter falls for the clown she goes to absurd lengths to foil her father’s plans.
This film has great photographic moments and I think it could be described as fiendish, and surreal.
Delicatessen 1 Minute Version
Time for sobering thoughts:
Wartime vegetable pie
Introducing great Italian Chefs
Eating in Melbourne
Vegemite ad
The Lunchbox
The film, The Lunchbox, opens with the famous lunchbox system of Mumbai. This article explains more:
Feeding the city; the Dabbawales
The film shows a very touching story about an unhappy wife who is preparing special lunch for her erring husband in the hope of rekindling his interest in her. The delivery company makes a mistake and delivers the lunch to the wrong person. This is the beginning of developing romance between participants unknown to each other.
At home the wife is seen in her kitchen confiding all that goes on, out of the window to her unseen ‘auntie’ who lives upstairs.
The film is colourful, warm and thought provoking. The producer points out that he intended to show us two stories, the one we, the viewers can see and also the inward struggles of the lovers.
The Lunchbox