Decadent Dinner with the Deer Hunter

The Cute Gardener and I have started a tradition where we spend a day doing some serious decadent food shopping and then create a culinary buffet to share that same night. For New Year’s it was caviar and champagne tasting. Earlier this year, we took a trek to Beverly Hills for an afternoon of pillaging the fine food offerings and had a Rodeo Drive worthy buffet. Last week, it was taking a trip to the random warehouse open house shopping day at Epicure Imports in North Hollywood to find a spread compatible with a newly arrived Blu Ray disk of The Deer Hunter.

What to eat with one of my favorite movies that pulls on the heart strings and features some of my all time favorite actors like the oddly eccentric Christopher Walken, the dashing and deep Robert DeNiro and a young and innocent eyed Meryl Streep? Why, foods equally rich and poignant compatible to producing the same strong emotions as the aorta-wrenching Russian roulette scenes and dramatic crescendos. 

A dipping plate handcraft from wood by him was poured with three kinds of olive oil and a pool of balsamic vinegar for the soft and fresh baguette. 

Small finger pots were filled with dried apricots, green olives, dried figs and plump, green grapes. 

A cheese plate was laid with an ashy covered Bonne Bouche cheese that creamily swam between the borders of its pungent rind; a hard, cantaloupe colored mimolette (that I had tried for the first time ever in Napa last summer on the Lub Farm); and a soft Epoisses Berthaut cheese in a wrinkled, tangy skin. 

The meat plate contained tart and acidic Coppa rolls; a tub of duck liver pate infused with chicken fat and port wine; and a beautiful slabs of meaty pork pate crusted with extra spicy peppercorns. 

A veggie plate of vegetables from the Cute Gardener’s garden was added to accentuate the meal filled with crisp snap beans, green peas and sumptuously smoky sautéed fava beans with just a hint of warming cumin. 

My favorite dish of the evening was the fava beans, but that is because aside from his luscious pasta dishes, my boyfriend has a green thumb gift of growing the yummiest veggies and cooking them up just right.

The spread lasted almost as long as the film even though the last few bites were peppered with my tears, being the sap that I am. I have seen The Deer Hunter more than any other movie in my life and still can’t get through it unscathed by the need for a soiled hankie.