Action, Let's Eat! Three Recipes for Pinsa Romana Inspired by Cinema

On August 31, 2022, the Venice International Film Festival, which this year celebrates its 79th edition. We let ourselves be carried away by the magic of the red carpet and we chose to celebrate the beginning of the cinematographic festival with 3 easy recipes for Pinsa Romana inspired by 3 films.

In each of these films there is a dish within a cult scene: we will thus take a journey through the history of cinema starting from an animated feature film by Pixar, passing through a work by the Neapolitan director Paul Sorrentino and ending our culinary journey in a small town in France to enjoy a dessert with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.

RATATOUILLE

The recipe of the ratatouille is the undisputed protagonist of the animated film of the same name by Pixar which sees the little mouse Rémy, with a great passion for cooking, become the sous chef of the young human Alfredo Linguini, scullery boy of a well-known French restaurant in Paris.

Rémy holds the secret to the perfect ratatouille: a mix of vegetables colorful, cut into slices of the same size and stewed in the oven, then distributed in a spiral on a bed of peppercorn sauce.

Now let's take the ratatouille and transform it into a condiment for a Roman PinsaFor the base, we will use the peppercorn sauce instead of the classic tomato puree. This is the Basque recipe for a tasty sauce made with red peppers sautéed with onion or leek and then blended together with EVO oil and basil.

The our vegetables instead they will be green courgettes, yellow courgettes, long aubergines and San Marzano tomatoes: it is important to cut all the vegetables into slices of similar size, then season them with oil and aromatic herbs to taste and cook them in the oven just long enough to leave them soft.

Now you can place the slices on your Pinsa Romana that you will have already cooked quickly in the oven and seasoned with the piperade sauce. If you want to perfectly replicate the recipe of the film, arrange the vegetables in neat rows, alternating them by color and overlapping them. One last pass in the oven and your Pinsa Ratatouille is ready!

AMATRICIANA FROM “IL DIVO”

The politician Giulio Andreotti, 7 times Prime Minister and 34 times Minister of the Republic, is “il Divo” of the film of the same name by Paolo Sorrentino, which in 2008 won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

An undisputed protagonist of Italian politics for much of the second half of the 20th century, Andreotti was of Roman origins and, as the film recalls, loved a traditional Lazio dish: spaghetti all'amatriciana.

The jowls will therefore be the main ingredient of our recipe: we sauté it first with olive oil in a pan, until the fat begins to melt; we deglaze it with a drop of white wine and then pour some peeled tomatoes into the same pan. As soon as the sauce is ready, we use it to season our already pre-cooked Pinsa Romana, put it in the oven and finish the recipe with a good dose of pecorino romano grated.

CHOCOLATE

In 2001 Chocolate was nominated as a candidate for all the major film awards, Oscar including. The iconic French actress Juliette Binoche, starring alongside the already famous Johnny Depp, was nominated for an Academy Award along with another European film star, Judi Dench, also present in the film with a fundamental part.

As you can easily imagine, the chocolate is the main food in this film, but it should be remembered that in this case we are not talking about a single recipe, but about many desserts all based on this irresistible ingredient. The film mentions the scandalous “Venus' nipples”, with rum, dark and white chocolate, almonds and cream; the delicious truffles with cocoa powder; the enterprising hot chocolate with chili pepper.

But there is one recipe in the film that remains the most appreciated and copied: the Vianne's cake, that is, the dessert entirely invented by the film's protagonist, Vianne Rocher. The basic ingredients of this dessert are dark chocolateAnd orange peel, which can become the ideal condiment for a sweet Pinsa Romana.

We start by caramelizing some orange slices in a pan with butter and sugar; then we spread a thin layer of orange marmalade on our Pinsa and place the caramelized slices on top. Off to the oven and when we come out we put a sprinkling of dark chocolate flakes and a few strands of chili pepper as decoration. If you want to finish with an even more delicious touch, melt some in a bain-marie white chocolate and then let it drip onto the Pinsa.

Did you like our recipes? Can you think of other films that could inspire us?