Wolfgang Puck’s Oscar Worthy Dishes

Hi, I'm Wolfgang Puck and I'm going to show you what I'm cooking for the Oscars. Well, I'll show you how to make my puff pastry Sivas with a little chive butter. It's very simple, we do it for the Oscars every year. and people love it, you know, for the Oscars we cook for 1600 people, so we can't cook everything to order, it would take too much time, but with the fish and the puff pastry we can do it in the morning and then have 40 or 50 of these fish. ready and we can cut them into small portions and we have 4 or 500 pieces of fish ready to go what I like is that I can do it in advance so that no one has to do it at the last second and it's great because the puff pastry stays very hot inside we make about 50 of these fish one even bigger one and this will not only cut it up and serve it with the sauce and everyone will get a hot fish by the time people leave the theater everyone is really hungry so when they come up we have a big sushi bar and everything outside with champagne, wine, cocktails and everything so people can have something to eat and then when people come into the room, as soon as they sit down somewhere, the waiter comes. with trays of food, all on small plates, now in the old days it was a more formal atmosphere, everyone had their place cards, but I said this is not a fun party because everyone had to sit for four hours in the theater, like this that when they went out they want to mix with people, so now I know if the spirit comes back or Clint Eastwood comes or some other director comes.

I seat them all in the same area for a more relaxed feel and now we serve everything in small cakes that everyone can eat, but instead of eating. On a big plate you can eat at 10 different places, so you get a small plate of fish in puff pastry, some small lamb chops or a small baked potato with some caviar. I'll show you how I make my famous black truffle chicken pie, everyone raves about it. I love seeing some people like Denzel Washington or Laura Murray, cleaned up, or some of the people I've known for 40 years when they always ask to see me, they say.

Oh, the wolf is here, we know we're going to have good food and I remember Powers Risin telling me a few weeks ago that she said, you know, I don't care what you cook for the Oscar, just make me my chicken pot pie. Prince Albert came one. a year after the Oscars and she said: I wish you would open a restaurant in Monte Carlo and make the same chicken pie that you made for the Oscars. We started doing that about eight years ago. Every year I order, like Shirley, pounds of black truffles from France. It's just the end of the season, end of February, beginning of March, we order a lot of caviar and we make tortellini or pasta with black truffles one year, when we still had the whole fancy dinner, when it was more formal, we made it for everyone and it was the first time everyone had hot food, but I think it has become such a popular dish that I will show you how to make my Salmon with Pesto Noodles healthy and delicious.

In the mid-'90s, the large board of governors asked me to attend the governor's meeting, which at the time was downtown at the Shrine Auditorium, but it was the first time everyone stayed for dinner because they knew that I was cooking and most of the movie people, most of the movie stars direct, the producers come to our restaurant, so they know the quality of the food that we serve so they said you have to do it every year and so on We started 23 years ago, one year Michael Caine came to the Oscars, one of our first Oscar parties, the next day he invited his whole family to Spago. and Wolfgang says, I want exactly the same thing that I ate last night at the dinner after the Oscars and that we made him the same dinner and he said almost as good as at the Oscars.

I told him that we won an Oscar so always make healthy food too, you know, meatless meal in a vegetarian meal, so we could make, for example, a tomato risotto, make it totally vegan, we use vegetable broth and we use tomato sauce that we make ourselves without parmesan or butter, just add more. The tomatoes are nice and creamy and we like it, we have a lot of vegan

dishes

and also vegetarian

dishes

. I have six people making vegan dishes. Salmon with pesto and vegetable noodles has become very popular. People think, "Oh, I want to eat healthy.

I want to eat something." Well, this is a perfect dish. I'm going to make the most delicious Cabernet Braised Short Ribs. All movie stars will love it. I think we do certain dishes differently so there's something for everyone, whether you want a baked potato recovery or a chicken pot pie or a UB bug, whatever it is, we've got it for you when we make the menu for the Awards. Academy, we'll have part of it is comfort food and part of it is innovation, short trips are really comfort food, chicken pot pie is really comfort food, so when people didn't eat all day, in the late afternoon , at 10 at night, everyone is so hungry that having real comfort food feels really good, we also give out our smoked salmon Oscars, our mini burgers, our sliders all kinds of different pizzas there are so many different dishes you can eat for an hour two hours whatever you want but what's exciting instead of having a big plate you can choose so many different ones last year we did surgery plates basically made like 15,000 plates, everyone has their favorite like Steven Spielberg.

He loves our braised short ribs with a little polenta. We always do some new things. This year we got, for example, 200 pounds of beef from Miyazaki Prefecture in Japan, which really has the best beef value. in the world, but many things are traditional like our chicken pot pie and our fish and buffets, they will prepare it every year. We also make 5,000 chocolate Oscars that we paint gold so people can take them home if they win or lose, we give them to everyone. For me the presentation of an Oscar is very important because we always eat with our eyes first, this is a dish

worthy

of an Oscar, in fact, it is better than most movies, oh yes.