I started looking for recipe inspiration everywhere long before I became a food writer. In my family when I was growing up, food wasn’t just something we ate for nutrition or good taste. It taught us about the world in which we lived and the people around us, in the present and in the past.
Food is often highlighted in books… and not just in the serious works of authors like Marcel Proust, for whom a madeleine becomes a gateway into childhood memories.
As a mystery reader, I tend to enjoy culinary mysteries, often referred to as “culinary cozies,” in which amateur detectives have some kind of food connection: they run bakeries, work as food critics, do catering, and so forth. Murder ensues. So do recipes.
Lisa Ekus, who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest personal cookbook collection in the world at her home in Hatfield, has an entire section of her culinary library devoted to these food mysteries.
One place in which I seldom find a lot of food inspiration is at the movies. There exist a few culinary-oriented films like “The Big Night,” “Babette’s Feast,” “Julie and Julia,” and of course “Ratatouille,” but these are not the rule.
Films have limited screen time and are often more interested in action than in dining. Personally, I would ALWAYS pick a dinner party over a car chase, in fiction as well as in real life. Apparently, my taste is not that of the usual cinema fan.
Fortunately, TV shows are not movies. For one thing, many of them are domestic in nature. Since the dawn of television, families in situation comedies have gathered around the table to talk about their days and settle family disputes. I personally have copied recipes from numerous historical shows, from “Amos ‘n’ Andy” to “Bewitched” to “The Golden Girls.”
An in-between fictional category — not really film but not exactly television — is the made-for-TV movie. Since mid-October, the Hallmark Channel and its sister networks have been churning out Christmas movies. I frequently get a recipe idea or two from these films.
This year’s most recent candidate for recipe development was the film “Winter Wonderlanes.” As one might guess from its title, this is a bowling-centered movie. Heroine Audrey (Ashley Newbrough) comes home and ends up helping her grandmother fix up the family bowling alley, which is about to go on the market.
She soon reunites with her ex-boyfriend, Jason (Franco Lo Presti), a local television news anchor, as she begins to revive the holiday traditions that made the alley popular in her youth.
In recent years, as its films have become more popular, the Hallmark Channel has been putting more money into some of its budgets. “Winter Wonderlanes” was apparently not a candidate for extra funds. The production design is tepid, and the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense.
For example, it’s never quite clear why Audrey and Jason broke up in the first place or how their spark is reignited.
Nevertheless, I stuck out the film in case it got better. And I was rewarded with a recipe idea.
The bowling alley, like many bowling alleys, features a snack bar. Its holiday special is something that had never occurred to me as a food to make: Cranberry Grilled Cheese.
I have made other delicious sandwiches with cranberry sauce, including Tunaberry and Leftover Thanksgiving (turkey and whatever). Watching “Winter Wonderlanes” made me long for the Cranberry Grilled Cheese.
I did a quick search on the internet. It turns out that the family running the bowling alley in this movie was NOT the originator of the Cranberry Grilled Cheese. I found lots of versions of this sandwich: lots with cheddar, a few with brie, even one with mozzarella.
I determined that mine would have a flavor I hadn’t found online: chipotle, which pairs beautifully with cheese. A few years ago, I put a recipe for Cranberry-Chipotle Brie in this paper; I decided to make that the model for my sandwich.
I ended up with a pleasing contrast of textures (the crunch of the grilling versus the creaminess of the brie) and flavors (a little sweetness, a little spice).
Please note that the quantities in the recipe below are inexact. I tend to buy or bake small loaves of bread; I prefer moderation to deprivation. My sandwich was consequently not very big. I have made the quantities below a bit larger than mine without, I hope, getting carried away.
In general, the idea is to get flavor from both the cranberry sauce and the brie without using so much of either that the sandwich is too much of a mess to cook. A little mess is acceptable and even desirable; a huge mess is… well, messy.
Obviously, if you make a whole recipe of Cranberry-Chipotle Sauce, you will have some left over to serve with meat or poultry or to spread on crackers and cheese.
If you don’t want huge leftovers, feel free to cut down on the recipe quantities. And of course, if you’re not a fan of chipotle, feel free to use regular cranberry sauce. I love chipotle, but I realize it’s not to everyone’s taste.
Happy eating … and happy Christmas-Movie Season!
Cranberry-Chipotle Grilled Cheese
Ingredients:
for the cranberry-chipotle sauce:
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
3 cups cranberries
1 to 2 chipotles in adobo (plus a little of the adobo sauce)
for each sandwich:
2 slices bread (make it good bread; that makes all the difference in a sandwich!)
a little butter
a little mayonnaise
about 1 ounce brie, sliced to fit the bread
about 1/4 cup cranberry-chipotle sauce
Instructions:
First, make the chipotle sauce. In a saucepan, combine the water and the sugar and bring them to a boil. Add the cranberries and the chipotles, and return the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat, and boil until the cranberries pop, 5 to 10 minutes. (If the sauce starts to get too fuzzy, add a tiny amount of butter.)
Let the sauce cool for a few minutes, and then make your sandwich.
Lightly spread one side of each piece of bread with butter; lightly spread mayonnaise on the other side. Divide the cheese between the two buttered sides, trying to mash it into the bread slightly.
Place the bread slices on a nonstick frying pan over medium heat, mayonnaise-side down. Cover and cook until the cheese starts to melt, a minute or 2.
Spread the cranberry sauce on top of one slice of bread. Carefully place the other slice on top of the cranberry sauce, cheese side down. Flatten the sandwich with a spatula, and cook until the cheese melts completely, flipping the sandwich a time or two to make sure it cooks evenly. This will take another minute or 2.
Serves 1 elegantly if goopily.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.