A good food flick, like a good food story, can make you smell without smelling and taste without tasting.
The opening scene of "Eat Drink Man Woman" or the fanciful meals in "Like Water for Chocolate" or the indulgent "Babette's Feast" are indelible.
The latest addition to the pantry of culinary-themed films is "Woman on Top" (opening Sept. 22), which stars Penelope Cruz as the sultry Isabella, who leaves Brazil for San Francisco to become a chef -- and to escape her two-timing husband.
Isabella lands a job teaching Brazilian cooking at a starched-toque culinary school and attracts the attention of Cliff (Mark Feuerstein), who's a local television producer. He offers her a cooking show, "Passion Food Live," which is an instant hit.
I won't tell you the plot details, so you'll have to pay eight bucks to find out who gets the girl. But I think it's a lighthearted, charming and sensual movie, perfect for a date.
There is a foodie "moral" to this saucy story: As Isabella says to her students, "To cook well, you have to have passion" -- and she doesn't mean in terms of mere enthusiasm.
In her first class, she shows her students how to cut a malagueta chili, its color a saturated scarlet, and sends everyone into ecstasy with her inherently suggestive words and motions.
"The ribs and seeds of the chilies is where the fire comes from," Isabella says in her lilting English. When the word "fire" passes between her lips, you don't think only of the spicy hotness of the pepper but also of your flaming desire for the person who twirls your whisks.
Coat your fingers with olive oil, she adds, so they don't burn when handling peppers. It's practical advice, but it also brings to mind the fatness of oil on skin.
Measure ingredients with your senses, she instructs. In time, your fingers will have a tactile memory of quantities, and a pinch or a smidgen will be virtually the same every time.
Cook with your eyes and nose, because they know; they tell you what you need to do with food.
When the shrimp turn pink and curve, says Isabella as she demonstrates a coconut shrimp recipe, you know the dish is done. She picks up a shrimp, salmon-shaded and curled, and says sweetly, "Isn't that beautiful?"
Where do you get such passion? From within. Trust me, it's there. You have to activate your imagination so you can see what may not be obvious at first.
If you try to cook and eat consciously, with all your synapses active, it becomes second nature. You'll not only remember voluptuous culinary experiences but learn to anticipate or create them. You'll be like a photographer who walks around seeing in rectangles.
The following recipes were developed by the creators of "Woman on Top":
COCONUT SHRIMP (Moqueca de camarao)
SERVES 4-6
2 pounds fresh medium to large shrimp
Juice of 4 limes
Coconut milk (recipe below)
2 medium onions -- 1 1/2 minced and 1/2 sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 tomatoes -- 3 diced and 1 sliced
2 red bell peppers -- 1 1/2 diced and 1/2 sliced
1 small chili pepper, minced (malagueta, if available)
1 bunch cilantro, washed and minced
Olive oil
Dende oil (if available)
Salt to taste
Peel and devein the shrimp. Rinse them in cold water, put in a bowl and incorporate lime juice. Let marinate.
Coat the bottom of a large, heavy skillet with olive oil and heat on a medium to high flame. Saute the minced onions, garlic, diced tomatoes, bell peppers, chili pepper and cilantro until the onions are translucent. Salt to taste.
Add shrimp to the cooked vegetables and cover with the sliced ones. Pour in the coconut milk. Drizzle with some dende (palm) oil, if using, and cook until the shrimp turn pink and begin to curl. Add more salt if needed. Serve the coconut shrimp over a bed of rice.
Fish, shellfish and chicken can be made into moquecas. Moquecas are native to Bahia in northeast Brazil, where cooking with creamy coconut milk is a part of daily life.
COCONUT MILK
1 coconut
Drain the coconut water by piercing two of the three "eyes" with an ice pick. Place the water in a small saucepan and warm it over low heat. In another small saucepan, warm some plain water.
Heat the coconut by placing it in an oven heated to 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. The coconut will develop fault lines. Place the coconut on a hard surface covered with newspapers. Hit it along the fault lines with a hammer. The coconut should open after a couple of strikes. Remove the meat from the coconut shell and peel the brown skin with a paring knife.
Grate the coconut with a cheese grater. (This is hard work, but it's worth it.) Wrap the grated coconut in cheesecloth, making a tightly wound pouch, and dip it into the warm (not hot) coconut water. The pouch will expand, absorbing the water like a sponge. Squeeze the pouch over a bowl, extracting as much of the milk as possible. This batch is called the "thick coconut milk."
When all the coconut water has been absorbed from the pan, repeat this process using regular water that has been warming over low heat. This batch is called the "thin coconut milk."
You can mix these and add the milk to taste to the shrimp recipe
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