Great Food Moments in Film -- The Godfather

There is a rule about eating in films, which is: don't. It just doesn't photograph well, and nobody wants to listen to actors deliver lines while their mouths are full. However, from time to time great culinary moments do surface in popular cinema, and I will periodically be looking at some of these scenes in "Great Food Moments in Film."
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"Hey, come over here, kid, learn somethin'. You never know, you might have to cook for 20 guys someday." -- Peter Clemenza, The Godfather

It is not often that major motion pictures are entertaining while also being educational. For instance, I loved 3:10 to Yuma but I didn't really take anything away from it beyond a renewed appreciation of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Thank goodness for The Godfather, which combines great drama with some important basic life lessons (two shots in the head a piece, please), one of which is the recipe to a good spaghetti sauce.

The scene in question comes between the first and second acts of the film, after one of the many cases of 'conflict resolution' seen in the film ("How's Paulie?" "Oh, Paulie, won't see him no more.") In this scene, Michael Corleone, still considered "a civilian," learns how to cook meat sauce from caporegime Peter Clemenza. This is the first of Michael's many initiations into the family after being seen as an outsider, and the act of learning how to make sauce is full of symbolism as an entrance into the Italian inner circle. Sauce is a thing of great importance to Italians, and a few of us--including myself--have very special family recipes that we are very particular about. To quote Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis, "While there are a lot of things I like to try from other people, tomato sauce is not one of them." My recipe came from my grandmother, which she in turn learned from her mother, so my family recipe is more or less about 100 years old. I imagine that the case is no different for Clemenza. He prepares his sauce with the familiarity of someone who has been doing it for years, and his recitation of the entire cooking process--which takes all of 24 seconds--is nothing but cook shorthand that has been boiled down from years of repetition. Clemenza makes it look simple, and for the most part, making sauce isn't brain surgery, but one of the reasons why it looks so simple is because it has been prepared so many times.

Apparently this recipe for sauce, which does not appear in the book, was a concoction of director Francis Ford Coppola. Save for a few things I do differently, his recipe reminds me a lot of mine--for instance, we both use brown sugar in our sauce--and if you listen intently and take a few notes, you should be able to follow this recipe and come up with a decent sauce. Reproduced below is the entire recipe, as delivered by Clemenza:

"You start out with a little bit of oil. Then you fry some garlic. Then you throw in some tomatoes, some tomato paste. You fry it, you make sure it doesn't stick. When you got it to a boil, you shove in all your sausage and your meatballs. Add a little bit of wine, and a little bit of sugar, and that's my trick."

Judging from that, here is a very rudimentary recipe to follow:
1 32 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
Minced garlic
Butter
Olive Oil
Italian Seasoning
Basil
Parsley flakes
Meatballs
Italian Sausage
Wine
Brown sugar

1. In a large sauce pan, saute minced garlic in a combination of butter and olive oil
2. Add tomato puree and tomato sauce to the garlic, add water or tomato puree to adjust thickness
3. Add Italian seasoning, basil, and parsley flakes to sauce
4. Add sausage and meatballs, make sure that meat is completely submerged in sauce
5. Add to sauce one small glass of red wine, and a tablespoon of brown sugar

Good Luck.

EDIT: It is important to note that Clemenza delivers these lines while actually doing the steps in front of Michael. If you don't own The Godfather, it'll benefit you to watch the scene and follow his steps that way. And if you don't have a copy of The Godfather, what's the matter with you?

Appetizer

Before we kick things off, a few words about the creation of this blog and the hopes I have for it:

My previous blog, a random collection of recycled links, lame jokes and personal stories, has left me unsatisfied creatively. I started IN OTHER NEWS™ as an outlet for me while I had to deal with work and school, but for a long time I have considered updating it to be a chore. Being fed up with my current blog, I have decided to start a new one with a more focused topic. I decided to go with a topic that I felt passionately about, to ensure that I would be more active in posting and that I would see this as another outlet, a haven where I can talk at length about the things that interest me.

But what interests me? I only have a passing interest in most things, and I don't care enough to write about pop culture, comics, music, movies, television or school. I do care about one thing a lot though: food. I never realized how much I care about it though, since food is such a commonplace part of my day. After thinking about it further however, I've realized how much I love food. Any food. Fast food, fancy restaurant fare, fruits and vegetables, candy bars, microwave dinners, anything. Any food. Food is freaking great. It was my love affair with food that kept me overweight for so many years--totally worth it by the way, I ate many delicious things--but even now, as I am among the ranks of the thin, my relationship with food has not changed.

I don't want to be biased either one way or the other in my food reviews. I want to talk about good food, but I also want to talk about fast food and junk as well. Either way, I just hope it will be entertaining and that I have as good a time writing about food as I do eating food.

I owe debts of gratitude to Tom the Dog's You Know What I Like? and Jon Yorde's Love Me Some Pop, the first as a model for good writing and the second as a structural model for writing what you know. Ian Brill's Brill Building also deserves a shout-out since I am following his lead and abandoning my old blog (please come back, Ian). With any luck What Looks Good? will be as good as the aforementioned. Okay, that's enough personal stuff. Let's Eat! I'll be starting things off with the In-N-Out Double-Double, my favorite meal.

Ben & Jerry's -- Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream

My first post on the Double-Double was lunch, so here's a special post for dessert. I don't typically partake in fancy ice creams like Ben & Jerry's (too expensive) but I was moved to buy a pint of the special promotional flavor "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" after seeing the ice cream shamelessly and hilariously plugged on a nightly basis by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.

...I bought the next six pints of Americone Dream after eating my first pint. My goodness, what a wonderful creation. I didn't need any other convincing beyond my first few spoons full. I have since become hooked on what is now the only ice cream I buy. It appears that it is here to stay and is no threat of being placed in the flavor graveyard, and as long as it is among the ranks of the living I will be a happy customer.

Americone Dream is deceivingly simple: it is made up only of vanilla ice cream, caramel swirl and chocolate covered waffle cone bits. This last ingredient was a stroke of genius--after all, the best part of eating an ice cream cone is when you get to eat the cone and the ice cream together--but it is the caramel swirl that won my heart when I first tried this flavor. It is the x-factor that supports the flavor over the much bally-hooed waffle cone bits. The consistency of the caramel is very soft, gooey, and stretchy, not solid or the least bit chewy. Each pint has several small pockets filled with caramel that is rich enough to stand out among the vanilla and the waffle cone, but not so overpowering that it becomes a caramel-flavored ice cream. The softness of the ice cream, the gooeyness of the caramel and the crunchiness of the ice cream all compliment each other perfectly to create the perfect texture for someone who is looking for an ice cream with more going on than just one flavor. For optimal enjoyment, let the ice cream sit out for a few minutes so it gets a nice, soft texture.

A word to those single-flavor lovers however: if you are turned off by the "ice cream with X mixed in" formula that has made Cold Stone Creamery and Ben & Jerry's such huge hits, you may be happier with a pint of regular 'ol chocolate than with Americone Dream, which I could easily see traditionalists describing as "busy." If you are feeling daring however, do try this flavor and see how it suits you.
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Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream, $1.88 @ Wal-Mart

In-N-Out Burger -- Double-Double

What better way to start this blog off, than with my favorite fast food meal? To me, the Double-Double with fries and a root beer is pound for pound the best meal available for purchase. There are other meals out there which are better, but in terms of consistency, value and quality, the Double-Double stands above any other food item. I'm not alone in this, of course: In-N-Out enjoys a surprisingly devoted fanbase, and it isn't because of the Bible verses stamped on the cups.

One of the main things the Double-Double--and all In-N-Out products by extension--has going for it is the freshness of its ingredients. In-N-Out does not have any freezers on premises, and receives its beef from one farm in central California. Lettuce and onions have an uncharacteristic crispness that compliments the ultra-soft bun, and the tomatoes fall somewhere in between, firm and juicy, and never soft. This burger tastes great as it is, but for those intrepid few who don't mind asking for it, the "animal style" version of the Double-Double features extra special sauce, a mustard-grilled patty, grilled onions and pickles. It has a lot of different ingredients without tasting "busy," everything meshes together perfectly for the best fast food burger around. To me this is the quintessential American meal, which is why I have chosen the Double-Double as my profile picture. Look at it...doesn't it just look beautiful? Good enough to eat, no?

For those who can't quite stomach a double cheeseburger--completely understandable--the In-N-Out cheeseburger is a perfect taste-a-like with less overall food to consume. And for those looking for something bigger, the 3x3 and 4x4 (triple and quadruple cheeseburgers, respectively) are also available when requested. The only catch is that these burgers are only available in California and select areas of Nevada and Arizona. Limited availability, coupled with high quality, has fostered a devotion to In-N-Out not unmatched by any major chain in the country.

It is for this reason that I am inducting the Double-Double as the inaugural member of the What Looks Good? Hall of Fame. The Double-Double represents a good litmus test for the potential readers of this blog: most people will either love it or consider it slightly overrated. I will admit that there might be better meals out there, maybe even better burgers, but since this is a mass-produced fast food burger that still has exceptional taste and quality, it is pound for pound the best burger on the market today, and my favorite meal. The people who claim that it is overrated are entitled to their wrong opinion and can keep their faulty taste buds. If you don't like the Double-Double, you probably won't dig my writing. You probably wouldn't have liked this blog anyway.

And that is how you start off a blog: by telling off part of your potential audience. Wait, where are you going? Come back...I didn't mean it! Come back!
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Double-Double, $2.65 @ In-N-Out Burger