One of my favorite dinner events is to build a menu around the food of a movie. There are a number of films that use food as a vehicle for driving a plot forward. One such movie is “Like Water for Chocolate.”

Although conceptually simple, the challenge with many literary or film-based menus arises when recipes are incomplete or non-existent. Cream Fritters, for example, are described in a sensory manner in the movie, but nowhere is it mentioned how one successfully deep fries merengue and cream! There is a secret–and an opportunity to be very creative.