February 19, 2009

At this time last year, Matt Accarrino was gearing up to throw the most talked-about Oscar party in town.

Vanity Fair magazine had tapped Craft Los Angeles, the restaurant where Accarrino is head chef, to host its annual post-Academy Awards bash. A year earlier, the magazine had held the party at Morton’s, and 800 people, from Oprah to Al Gore to that evening’s winners, had shown up to dance, dine and be photographed until the wee hours.

Now it was Craft’s turn to shine, and expectations were high.

Craft is the West Coast outpost of celebrity chef Tom Colicchio’s burgeoning empire. Patrons can’t help but judge its kitchen with the same stink-eye stare that Colicchio levels at the sweating, panting contestants on his hit show, “Top Chef.” Craft also holds down a corner of the Creative Artists Agency’s glassy, Apple Store-like headquarters in Century City — it’s an Industry commissary that should know how to wow A-listers.

The key to it all, Accarrino told me, is staying true to your cooking philosophy, no matter who’s coming to dinner, no matter how fancy the party.

“Dresses make parties fancy,” he said. “We have not ever really dramatically had to change what we do here at Craft to make it more or less fancy. We believe in serving the best ingredients we can find at their best. I may add a bit of personal style, but the quality of the food is the star.”

The menu he designed for the Vanity Fair party reflected that style: appetizers of fried brandade (dried cod purée) with caper aioli, piquillo pepper marmalade and spiced almond; trays of wagyu beef tartare with chimmichurri sauce, compressed cucumber and garlic toast, and pass-arounds of roasted baby beets, pistachio puree, goat cheese and blood orange.

But Accarrino hadn’t sliced into his first blood orange when Craft got word: the party was off. In the midst of the writer’s strike, Hollywood wasn’t in a partying mood.

“After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party,” said a statement posted on VanityFair.com.

The cancellation came early enough so there wasn’t any food lost, and Accarrino took it in stride: the restaurant filled that night anyway with a private Oscar party for another client.

Craft isn’t kosher, but when I asked Accarrino to come up with recipes for a kosher Oscar party, he didn’t blink. The man has been around.

The New Jersey native took to the idea of cooking seasonal, locally farmed food while he worked at the Michelin guide-rated Antonello Colonna restaurant in Labico, Italy.

Back in the States he worked as an opening sous chef at chef Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, also putting in time at the restaurants of Rick Moonen, Charlie Palmer and Todd English.

He joined Colicchio’s team in 2005, after writing the chef something of a fan letter (judging from many e-mails, Accarrino’s a fine writer, too).

In coming up with a kosher menu, Accarrino said his sous chef Micah Wexler would help him with the assignment.

The 26-year-old Wexler was in charge of all special events and private parties at Craft for 2008. Not only did the San Fernando Valley native work for Wolfgang Puck, Gino Angelini and, in New York, for Atelier Roubchon, he’s a graduate of Adat Ari El Day School and Milken Community High School. He’d better know kosher.

For an Oscar night menu, Accarrino and Wexler chose three dairy dishes that draw on bold fresh flavors and preparations that highlight the ingredients. When food is competing for attention with Vera Wang’s dresses and Bruce Vilanch’s punch lines, Accarrino’s advice is to “go for broke. Even when food is not the event, it’s no reason to make it anything less than special.”

In this case, special means smoked whitefish or salmon formed into a rillette, or French-style country paté, then rolled in traditional Moroccan brik pastry and fried. A second dish involves fresh goat cheese melted on a crisp homemade flatbread together with onions that have been sautéed slowly until sweet and caramelized. The most complicated dish is a ravioli of earthy yams stuffed into a seasonal chestnut pasta. The finished ravioli are sautéed in brown butter and fresh sage, then served on spoons with chestnut slices, more sage and pomegranate seeds.

OK, not so simple. But Accarrino also has sound advice for a foolproof (and kosher) menu that would work for any party, at any season:

“Serve great cheeses, marinated farm-fresh vegetables, cucumber and tomato in the summer, cippolini onions and wild mushrooms in the winter. Serve great charcuterie. Although traditionally made with pork, there are great kosher examples, such as bresola [Italian air-dried beef] and prosciutto made from lamb or duck instead of pork. Serve things that can stay at room temperature and serve them family-style. It makes a great and generous presentation and keeps people together and social.”

“Simple things can be transcendent,” Accarrino reminded me. “The important thing is that the food is a   quality product and it tastes good. There is no substitute for flavor.”

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GOAT CHEESE & ONION FLATBREADS

Ingredients:

1 package dry yeast
2 1/2 tablespoons water, warm
1 cup and 3 tablespoons water, room temperature
1 ounce olive oil
2 cups and 2 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup caramelized onions
1 cup goat cheese
1/2 cup pitted Nicoise olives, sliced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

Mix yeast with warm water in mixing bowl; let stand till bloomed, five to 10 minutes. While you are waiting, mix dry ingredients. With the paddle attachment and machine on low speed, stir in water and oil till incorporated.

Gradually add dry ingredients, still on low speed. Mix two minutes. Change to the dough hook. Mix for two minutes more on low speed. Now on medium speed mix for three minutes more. Place in a well-oiled container and cover. Place in refrigerator and proof overnight.

The following morning, take dough out of refrigerator and let it come to room temperature for one hour. Remove dough gently and place on lightly floured table.

While dough is rising, prepare caramelized onions (recipe follows).

Divide dough into equal portions and shape into balls. Store in container that has been floured. Allow to rest for 20 minutes in a warm place. Punch down and roll out to a round shape.

Place on a pizza peel; top with caramelized onions, black olives and goat cheese. Slide onto preheated pizza stone in a 400 F oven. Bake eight to 10 minutes or till golden. Sprinkle thyme leaves over top and cut into wedges. Serve hot.

Caramelized Onions Ingredients:

2 onions
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Slice two onions in half lengthwise, then cut into 1/4 inch slices crosswise.

Heat 1/2 cup olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, stir to coat with the oil, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and cook, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft and have just begun to color, about 30 minutes.

Remove the cover, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, increase the heat to medium and cook uncovered, stirring frequently, until the onion is deep golden and caramelized, about 25 minutes.

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Warm Smoked Fish Cigars and Salsa Verde

Fish Filling
1 pound flaked smoked whitefish or king salmon
1/4 cup diced steamed potato
1/4 cup diced sautéed carrot
1/4 cup diced sautéed celery
1/4 cup minced shallot, marinated with a few drops of red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon crème fraiche
1 tablespoon fines herbs (chervil, parsley, tarragon, chives), chopped

Wrapping
1 package brik dough
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water
Oil to fry (canola or vegetable)

Salsa Verde
3/4 cup chopped fines herbs (chervil, parsley, tarragon, chives)
1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts
1 tablespoon capers
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 clove roasted garlic
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Combine flaked fish with warm potato and vegetables in a stand-up mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Mix to combine. Add in mustard, crème fraiche and herbs to combine. Season and chill.

Cut brik dough into 4-inch-by-4-inch squares. Form about one tablespoon of fish mixture into a log and roll brik dough around filling. Take care to fold in the sides. Seal the edge of the dough with egg wash. Reserve cigars for later.

In a blender, combine herbs, pine nuts, capers, bread crumbs, roasted garlic, Parmesan cheese and extra-virgin olive oil. Blend on low speed until a chunky but even paste forms. Season and reserve.

When ready to serve, fry cigars in 350 F oil until golden. Make sure you use a pot that is at least four times the volume of oil you plan to fill it with — you do not want it to overflow. Cut each cigar in half on a bias and serve with salsa verde.

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Yam-Filled Chestnut Ravioli

Yam Filling Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups roasted, peeled yam 1 1/2 teaspoons brown butter
1 tablespoon mascarpone
1/2 teaspoon acacia honey
1 pinch kosher salt
5 turns black pepper

Combine all in food processor. This may take several batches. Cool.

Chestnut Pasta Dough Ingredients:

1/2 cup Italian 00 flour
2 1/2 tablespoons chestnut flour
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon whole milk
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil

Combine all dry ingredients. Combine all wet ingredients. Mix wet to dry in stand-up mixer on medium for seven minutes.

Ravioli Ingredients:

Yam Filling from above
Chestnut Pasta Dough from above
Parmesan cheese
Unsalted butter
Fresh peeled chestnuts, sliced thinly
Sage leaves
Pomegranate seeds

Roll out chestnut dough using a pasta roller to the next-to-thinnest setting. Pipe teaspoon-size mounds of yam filling from a piping bag onto half the dough.

Fold the dough over and seal to form ravioli. Punch out with a round cutter (keep in mind these need to be small enough to fit on a spoon) and thin the edges all around to both seal the ravioli and ensure they will cook evenly. Cook the ravioli in simmering salted water till tender.

Meanwhile brown the butter in a sauté pan with the chestnuts, cooking them to a crisp and golden brown. Add the sage and fry to release the flavor. Add the ravioli and toss gently to coat in the browned sage butter.

Season and finish with grated Parmesan cheese. Place ravioli on spoons with chestnut slices, sage and garnish with pomegranate seeds.

 

Tia Lessin did not set out to profile survivors of Hurricane Katrina when she and her life partner, Carl Deal, began shooting their Oscar-nominated documentary, “Trouble the Water,” in New Orleans, one week after the storm hit in late summer 2005. Instead, the co-directors planned to chronicle the thousands of Louisiana National Guard soldiers returning from Iraq to assist in the disaster relief.

A few days into their trip, however, it appeared that the directors might have to pack up and return home to New York. National Guard officials seemed wary of the independent filmmakers and weren’t giving them access to interviews. One even mumbled that “‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ had screwed things up” for documentarians — apparently unaware that Lessin had been a producer on “Fahrenheit” and a longtime associate of its provocative director, Michael Moore.

As Lessin continued to argue with the official, Deal, his camera running, followed some soldiers into a nearby Red Cross shelter, at which point a charismatic 24-year-old literally walked into his camera frame. She introduced herself as Kimberly Roberts, pointed out her husband, Scott, and announced that she had the real story about what had befallen impoverished residents due to Katrina.

“Almost immediately, we knew we had a new subject for our film,” Lessin said in a phone interview from San Francisco, where she was promoting the film.

She learned that the Roberts, an African American couple from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, had had their car stolen three weeks before the hurricane. And that Kimberly just before the storm had purchased a camcorder for $20 and throughout the crisis turned the lens on herself and others who did not have the means to flee.

Roberts, who becomes the main character of “Trouble the Water,” realized even amid the chaos and terror that her harrowing video of waters rising and people cowering in her attic would be astounding historical footage.

“What I’ve got, I’ve been saving it, ’cause I don’t want to give it to nobody local,” she told Lessin soon after they met. “This needs to be worldwide. ’Cause all the footage I’ve seen on TV, nobody got what I got. I got right there in the hurricane.”

Lessin, the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, recognized the extraordinary survivor spirit in Roberts, and she and Deal immediately saw an opportunity for collaboration. Roberts’ raw footage, combined with the documentarians’ own work, became their film.

Robert’s history and her trauma during Katrina and afterward became a through-line for a larger story about the hurricane and its aftermath. “Trouble the Water” weaves back and forth in time, describing how Roberts lost her mother to AIDS when she was 13, how she sold drugs and lived on the streets and then cleaned up her act, moved to the Ninth Ward and, before Katrina hit, aspired to become a rap artist.

The documentary reveals how Roberts used her street smarts to brave and flee the floodwaters and strove to assist both friends and strangers. She also stuck around to rebuild her community in the aftermath.

“If … destruction comes, I want to be here to tell people we had a world,” Roberts says on tape as the storm approaches. When she realized she wouldn’t be able to leave, she thought, “If I die, I hope somebody finds this camera.”

“Trouble the Water” won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival grand jury award for best documentary, as well as stellar reviews. TIME magazine called it “an endlessly moving, artlessly magnificent tribute to people the government didn’t think worth saving.”

Lessin, 44, said her approach to the project was informed by her own family history. Although she is careful not to equate the Holocaust with Katrina, she sees parallels in the destruction of tightly knit communities, the abandonment by government of its most vulnerable citizens and a Diaspora of refugees far from their homes.

“I understand from my own experience that this kind of tragedy impacts generations,” she said. “Something like Katrina doesn’t just happen to people and they move on. It has a legacy, and we will see that legacy unfold in the case of New Orleans for the next 40 years.”

The legacy of the Holocaust has deeply affected Lessin’s own life and work. As a girl, she pored through the memorial book that commemorated her maternal grandmother’s razed town. Her grandfather had the savvy to obtain passage to Trinidad — the only place he knew of where one could flee without a passport, escaping there with his wife and their 6-year-old daughter, Lessin’s mother. But when he learned of the death of his parents six years later, he fell into a severe depression and died destitute in Chicago.

“At the time, my grandmother was in her 30s, and she didn’t speak any English,” Lessin said. “She remarried, got work as a garment worker, made decent wages. But the pain and desperate sadness of her loss haunted her every day.”

Lessin’s mother grew up to become an attorney with the Justice Department; the filmmaker’s father was a lawyer with the Environmental Protection Agency. “They were liberals who believed in the role of government in helping its citizens,” Lessin said.

She inherited their Jewish passion for social justice, studying the American labor movement at Cornell University and helping organize restaurant workers on Capitol Hill. When her arrest for civil disobedience made the television news, Lessin saw the power of the media in advancing a cause and decided to become a documentary filmmaker.

Her first professional job in the early 1990s was preparing a video exhibition for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on how the U.S. government had failed to help Jews escape the Final Solution. She also interviewed descendants of Wounded Knee survivors for “Shadow of Hate,” Charles Guggenheim’s film about racial and religious intolerance. And then she saw the pilot for Michael Moore’s satirical television program, “TV Nation.”

“It had been called the smartest and funniest show on television, but it was also highly political, and I realized you could do all those things at once,” Lessin said. “I vowed to get a job on that show by hook or by crook.”

Lessin not only got her wish, she also went on to work as a producer for Moore on films such as “The Awful Truth” and “Bowling For Columbine,” sometimes stepping in to do interviews when “Michael’s mere presence might set people off.”

“He taught me to be completely unapologetic about storytelling, to never take no for an answer and that humor sometimes is a more potent weapon than outrage,” Lessin said. “Michael also was the pioneer of using personal voice to draw people into a story,” which we used for ‘Trouble the Water.’ Although Carl and I do not [present] ourselves in the movie, we definitely use the personal voice of Kimberly Roberts.”

Indeed, Roberts’ voice is so compelling that “Trouble the Water” has been cited alongside Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke” as one of the most important films to emerge about Katrina. The film also is among “the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New Orleans,” a reviewer wrote in The New Yorker.

Lessin hopes the movie will counter the cliché of Katrina survivors as victims.

“It’s a story,” she said, “about the resilience of both a couple and a community.”

If you remember your Bible — and of course you do — you’ll recall the scene when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai and sees the People of Israel — that’s you — forsaking God and praying to a statue of a Golden Calf. 

Well, every year as I watch the Oscars I always imagine Moses coming down from the mountain only to find his People lifting their eyes in unholy expectation toward a statue of a Little Golden Man. And just as they are announcing the Oscar pick for Best Original Song, Moses would look at the tablets in his arms and say, “I hold these Ten Commandments, written by God, and you’re giving an award to the guy who wrote, ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’?” Then he’d smash the tablets on the floor of the Kodak Theatre.

That’s why every year I stay away from the Oscars. That, and I’ve never been nominated.

All this got me thinking, what’s with all this awards narrishkayt? (For the Yiddishly impaired: narrishkayt is Yiddish for bullsh**.) Sure movies can change the world, uplift people’s miserable lives, bring joy to millions and hard currency to struggling, much-loved development executives, but maybe we should be honoring something even bigger. How about an attempt to end all wars? People say religion causes war. Narrishkayt! Too many religions cause war. If there were just one, there’d be nothing to fight over. So wouldn’t it be great if we could preempt all wars by choosing one religion?

Maybe it’s time we picked a winner.

So forget about the Oscars, or the Emmys. I say we have one big theological awards show called … “The Theos”!

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Here to present this year’s nominees is last year’s winner, Bishop Desmond Tutu.

BISHOP TUTU
And the nominees for outstanding religion in an organized or unaffiliated sect are … Catholicism: Pope Benedict the XVI — Jesus Christ, producer. Judaism: Moses — Steven Spielberg, producer. Buddhism: The Dalai Lama — Richard Gere, producer.

There would be other nominees as well, but I’m not gonna name names, because certain religions don’t take jokes very well.

Then they announce the winner. If the Theos took place in Hollywood and Judaism won, some would argue it was fixed. The same would be said if Scientology takes home the award. Even Catholicism would come under scrutiny if it won. The Jews run Hollywood, so of course they’d pick one of their own (anyone remember that Jesus was a rabbi?). I know that if I were a member of the academy, I’d vote for Judaism. But if it didn’t win, I’d be rooting for Jesus. Because, you know how some people go back to eating meat after being vegetarians? Maybe he’d reconsider and come back to his Jewish roots. I believe that’s why the pope wears a yarmulke. Just in case Jesus comes back and says, “Hey everyone, I’ve had a long time to think about things, and I’ve decided to go back to the whole Jew thing I was doing!” And then the pope would raise his kippah and say, “I’m right there with ya, Jesus!”

Also, if Jesus won, it would make for such a great acceptance speech:

JESUS
There are so many people I want to thank. I should’ve written this down, but I didn’t think I was going to win! OK, first and foremost I want to thank my Dad. Thanks Pop! We did it! Um, I want to thank all the apostles, Peter, Paul, there are so many of you; if I forget, please forgive me. And my writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mary Magdalene, for all her love and support, and Charlie Sheen for introducing us.

At this point Jesus would get choked up and look down lovingly at the award.

JESUS (CONT’D.)
Ahhh, I don’t want to get all mushy here, but I have waited 2,000 years for this! Oh, and I want to thank all the rappers for thanking me in their acceptance speeches! This is goin’ out from JC to JayZ! Peace!

So when you’re watching the Oscars this year, I hope, like me, you’ll be yelling at the screen, “Go Jews, go!”

I do have to say that all this talk of awards just makes me think … damn, I’d love to win an Oscar!

Elon Gold is a comedian, actor and writer who has starred in sitcoms(FOX’s “Stacked,” NBC’s “In-Laws”) and is currently readying his fifthappearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and hisone-man show, “Elon Gold: Half Jewish, Half Very Jewish.”