My awesome daughter Maggie (with the superpower of autism!) is once again researching and creating menus based on Pixar Movies. Most recently, she developed four (YES! FOUR!) full days of meals based on the movie Ratatouille, a mere ONE MOVIE! If you read my previous blog on this topic, you know that she was able to get FOUR Toy Story movies into ONE day of food. But then – Toy Story was not actually based on food and Ratatouille is, so there’s that. If you have not seen the movie, just know that it involves an upscale French restaurant and rat who cooks gourmet food. Appetizing . . .

So Maggie and I have a system: She decides on the movie focus, finds sources online for menu and recipe ideas from Pixar movies (and she’s certainly not the only one who likes movie-based food!), creates her own idea list, and sends me links. We go over the menus together. My mission is to take her list, simplify it if needed, and – especially in the case of Ratatouille – make any gourmet dishes actually affordable. Together, we cook enough for the whole family, Maggie photographs the food before sitting down (all the photos seen here are hers), and we dig in. Maggie and I are experimental eaters and will pretty much try anything. Other members of our beloved family are not quite so adventurous, although we do our best to make everything palatable! Here are the recipes for our ONE day of Ratatouille completed thus far. I am pretty sure she has a dream of doing the other three days down the road, but Wall-E is up next and it will be remarkably easy so I am ignoring the cooking rodent movie for the immediate future.

NOTE: Many of Maggie’s suggestions come from http://disneymeals.me. We frequently do not follow their recipes since we often find purchased or homemade alternatives that work better for us, but it’s a cool resource.

Breakfast
Cheese cubes
Strawberries
Lightening-y Mushrooms

Whew! Breakfast was not difficult. The cheese cubes had to be cheddar and the strawberries, fresh. Lightening-y Mushrooms (so named because two characters in the movie were actually struck by lightening while making them) are basically baby portobellos stuffed with goat cheese and baked. The recipe is located at the site mentioned above and, for once, we pretty much followed it.

Lunch
Caesar Salad with Salmon (but without the Salmon)
Cheese Souffle

We purchased bagged Caesar Salad at Sam’s Club because we already like it. I decided to take a short cut and use canned salmon, but hadn’t purchased it in years so failed to recall that some of it comes with all the bones and skin still intact in the can. You will note in the photo that our Caesar salad is unadorned by salmon. And that’s all I have to say about that (Forrest Gump reference? Yes).

On a more positive note, we were ecstatic to find a lovely recipe for Easy Cheese Souffles by Chef John at allrecipes.com! The recipe did sound simple, but I have heard culinary horror stories about souffles falling dramatically – especially if you mess with the recipe. However, the recipe called for two 5.5 ounce ramekins and we had six 8 ounce, so without hesitation or trepidation (maybe a little trepidation) we promptly multiplied the recipe by four. Good times. Ha. And I have to tell you that CHEF JOHN TOTALLY KNOWS HIS STUFF!! We increased the cooking time to accommodate the larger size, but those souffles popped right up like little Queen Elizabeth hats and DID NOT FALL! The x4 recipe came together easily, exactly filled our six ramekins, and tasted delicious!

Dinner
Seared Beef
Wild Rice
Vegetables
Mille Feuille

Steak can be expensive – so Sam’s Club to the rescue once again! We found affordable cuts and used an electric skillet to sear and cook the steaks in our usual way. Would a cast iron skillet have been a bit more gourmet? Mmmm – possibly! But you go with what you’ve got. And the wild rice? Helllooo, Uncle Ben! Great stuff, easy prep. The veggie selection suggested on disneymeals looked perfect so we lightly grilled zucchini, yellow squash, red pepper, and a bit less onion than recommended (since some in the fam think onions were invented solely to be sliced in rings, coated with batter, and fried).

Of course we websearched how to pronounce Mille Feuille, so everybody speak up and say: “mil foy”. There you go – say it often and spell it never. We were happy to find ready-to-bake puff pastry (Pepperidge Farm) but realized we would need to make the pastry cream so again turned to ever-reliable allrecipes.com. Success! If you need a delicious, simple, and affordable 5-star pastry cream recipe, look for the effectively (if not creatively) titled Pastry Cream by Christinibeanie. Maggie was marvelously efficient at the constant stirring to prevent scorching and the cream cooked up with an addicting taste and very nice consistency!

While the cream chilled, we placed each raw pastry sheet on a parchment-covered baking sheet, neatly sliced it into three equal rectangular strips, covered those with a layer each of parchment and foil, set another baking sheet on top to keep the pastry flat while cooking, then gently smashed the sheets further with a spatula while still warm. We created a light icing of milk and powdered sugar with just a touch of lemon. After the pastry cooled, Maggie spread the chilled cream thickly on two strips of pastry and iced the top layer before stacking, then we carefully cut the rectangular stacks into square portions. Maggie decorated them with Ghirardelli Premium Sauce Chocolate syrup (in the red bottle). And I gotta say – the Mille Feuille tasted incredible! We actually had enough cream and pastry leftover to make a fresh batch for dessert the next night, as well, so I think my calorie load has been met for the next couple of months.

If you are not sure about doing an entire Ratatouille day and decide to just try one or two things, I highly recommend the Souffle and the Mille Feuille. Enjoy!