Pistachio Martini Recipe

Ingredients: Serves 1

4oz Pistachio cream liqueur (my favorite is the brand Valmas)

2oz vodka

1oz simple syrup

Instructions:

Add the pistachio cream liqueur, vodka, and simple syrup to a jar and shake to combine. Store in your refrigerator until it’s time to serve. This is a great drink to prep ahead of time to save time the day of the movie night.

Strawberry Cold Foam Recipe

Ingredients:

1/3 cup of heavy cream

2 tbsp of strawberry jam (or strawberry syrup if you don’t want chunks)

A few drops of pink food coloring gel (this is optional if you want the foam pinker. I didn’t do this, and you can tell the foam came out very pale)

Instructions:

Add all your ingredients to a medium bowl and mix on high speed with a hand mixer. You only want to mix for 1-2 minutes. Don’t overmix. The cold foam should be a thicker liquid, but not to the point that it’s whipped cream.

Serving tips: This is the first item on the menu, so you can quickly make it right before you start the film. Assemble your drink by first pouring your pistachio martini into your glass, leaving some space for the cold foam on top. Gently pour your cold foam on top; some will sink into the martini. This is normal, so don’t worry.

Crown and Heart Decoration: To make the crown decoration, I drew the crown and hearts with colored pencils. I then cut them out and taped them to a cocktail pick. I taped the other end of the cocktail picks to the glasses. I recommend doing this the day before to save time the day of movie night.

This is one of the most important dishes from the movie, so I HAD to make sure the Gumbo came out perfect! I can confirm it was my husband’s and niece’s favorite dish I served! This is exactly how I made it. It takes time to build the flavor, so be patient. It’s worth it!

Tiana’s Gumbo Recipe:

Ingredients:

For the Roux:

½ cup of bacon grease or frying oil

½ cup all-purpose flour

For the Gumbo:

1 lb andouille sausage, sliced

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 onion, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 cup of celery, diced

5 cloves garlic, minced

6 cups of chicken broth

1 bay leaf

1 ½ tbsp of Cajun seasoning 

1 lb of raw gumbo shrimp (peeled and deveined)

Tabasco

Instructions:

Make the Roux:

1. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot (like a Dutch oven), heat the bacon grease over medium heat.
2. Whisk in the flour and stir constantly for 20-30 minutes, until the roux becomes a deep, chocolate-brown color. Not caramel. A DEEP, chocolate-brown color. Be careful not to burn it by having the heat too high.

Build Flavor:

1. Add the onion, bell pepper, and celery (the “Holy Trinity” of Cajun cooking) to the roux. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often.
2. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute.

Cook The Meat:

1. Add the andouille sausage to the roux and cook for 2-3 minutes. Transfer everything from the pot to a bowl and set it to the side.
2. Add the chicken thighs to the pot, sprinkle with some of the Cajun seasoning, and brown them slightly, for about 5 minutes. 

Gumbo Time:

1. Add the chicken broth while stirring to unstick any clumps on the bottom of the pot.
2. Return the contents of the bowl plus the rest of your Cajun seasoning to the pot and stir. Bring to a boil, and then lower the heat, add your bay leaf, and place the lid on the pot. The longer it cooks, the more the flavor develops. I let mine cook for about 4 hours. Keep checking on it and stirring occasionally. Make sure to try the gumbo and add more salt or spices to match your taste preference. If the gumbo gets too thick, add some water.

Last Steps:

1. Right before you’re ready to serve, turn the heat off and add your shrimp to the gumbo and stir so the shrimp is submerged in the gumbo. Place the lid on your pot and let the shrimp cook for about 5 more minutes until they are completely cooked through.
2. Remove the bay leaf before serving. Ladle the gumbo over warm white rice, garnish with diced green onions, and enjoy!

Serving tips: You can make this ahead of time and reheat it in the microwave before serving. The gumbo will keep developing in flavor in your refrigerator and be even more delicious! Also, don’t forget to serve your gumbo with Tabasco! It’s Tiana’s special ingredient! The gumbo already has some mild heat from the Cajun seasoning, so I recommend letting your guests decide if they want to add the Tabasco.

For this scene, I wanted to try to replicate the food at Duke’s, including the most important part. Tiana’s beignets!

This included pancakes, Cajun bacon, sausage links, fried eggs, cheesy grits, and beignets.

Pancake recipe– This is my absolute favorite pancake recipe!

Cajun bacon– To make this bacon, sprinkle Cajun seasoning on your bacon strips and then cook the bacon as you normally would.

Sausage links– I used frozen breakfast sausage links and cooked per the packaging instructions.

Fried eggs– I fried the eggs sunny side up to match the ones from Duke’s.

Cheesy grits– Here is the recipe for easy cheesy grits!

Tiana’s Beignet Recipe

The only thing I did differently was drizzle honey on the beignets before adding the powdered sugar. This is what Tiana does, so it’s a step that can’t be missed!

Serving tips: Because beignets need to be fried, they are much better served fresh. The good thing is that this scene comes close to the beginning of the movie, so you can fry them up as the last step of your prep before starting the movie. Just be aware of when you plan on starting the movie so you can time out when to make your dough. The dough needs to double in size, which can take about an hour and a half.

I recommend that while you let the dough rise, you work on making the bacon, eggs, and sausage, as they also taste better when they are made fresh. The pancakes and grits can be made in advance and reheated. Make sure you set up this tray before you start the movie, since you have the serve it right after Tiana’s gumbo. You can reheat everything except for the beignets before serving.

I absolutely love the song “Almost There,” so I wanted to serve a dish so it could be featured.

I decided on a Chantilly Cake for the scene where Tiana is skillfully adding whipped cream to cakes and pies.

I did A LOT of cooking for this Movie Night, so I wanted to save time where I could. For this reason, I purchased the cake from the grocery store. Any cake or pie with whipped cream will work.

Midori Gin Sour Recipe: Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 oz Midori

1 oz gin

1 oz simple syrup

½ oz lemon juice

½ oz lime juice

Club Soda

Instructions:

Add the Midori, gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, and lime juice to a jar and shake. Multiply ingredients depending on how many servings you are making. I like to premix cocktails the day before Movie Night and store them in the refrigerator to save time with the preparations.

Ube Spirits:

To make the spirits, I drew the shapes on a white piece of paper with a marker. Make sure the shapes are big enough to sit on top of the glass you will be serving the Midori Gin Sour in. The desired effect is that the green will shine through purple spirits, like how they appear in the movie.

After you are happy with the spirit shapes, place the paper on a baking sheet, and also place parchment paper over the piece of paper. The parchment paper is see-through, so it creates the perfect surface to trace the shapes with the melted chocolate.

To melt the chocolate– Add ½ a cup of white chocolate chips, 1 tsp of coconut oil, and ½ tsp of ube flavoring to a microwave-safe dish. If you don’t want to make it Ube flavored, another option is to use purple melting chocolate and forgo to ube flavoring.

Microwave the dish with chocolate for 30 seconds. Take the dish out and mix well. Then microwave for an additional 15 seconds and stir well again. Keep microwaving for 15 seconds and stir until the chocolate is melted. It’s important not to overheat the chocolate because the high sugar content will make it burn faster.

Add the melted chocolate to the piping kit with a fine tip so you can trace the shapes of the spirits you drew. If the chocolate is too “runny”, let it cool for a few minutes before tracing.

When you are done tracing the spirits, put the baking sheet in the refrigerator so the chocolate can harden. You can keep the chocolate in the refrigerator until it’s time to serve.

When it’s time to serve– Add ice to your glasses and evenly pour your premixed cocktail into the glasses. Top the rest of the glasses with club soda and then place the chocolate spirit garnish on top.

For this scene, Tiana makes Gumbo using ingredients they find in the wild. There is a cute part where she teaches Naveen how to mince mushrooms, so for this dish, I served her gumbo with minced mushrooms. I also served the gumbo in a pumpkin dish, like how Tiana cooked it in the wild. I served the gumbo with white rice in wooden bowls to also match their meal.

The gumbo I serve is the same one from the beginning of the movie. Please see “Tiana’s Gumbo” for the recipe. I minced mushrooms before starting the film and stored them in the refrigerator with a paper towel, so they didn’t get soggy.

When it was time to serve, I microwaved the rice and gumbo (with the minced mushrooms) in microwave-safe dishes and added them to the serving dishes. I also had pre-chopped green onions that I sprinkled on top of the gumbo as a garnish before serving.

This movie features a lot of gumbo, so I decided to get creative with this scene. It always makes me giggle that Mama Odie is making gumbo in her bathtub like homemade moonshine. This inspired this drink featuring Hunch Punch Moonshine in little bathtubs acting as cups. I found these small bathtubs at Michaels Craft Store, and I was lucky that they were on sale. If I didn’t find them in person, I would have purchased these bathtubs instead. I had to line the ones I found at Michaels with plastic wrap because the paint on them would not have been safe to consume. The shape also made it hard to drink. These bathtubs from Amazon are plastic, and the shape looks much easier to drink from.

I don’t particularly like the taste of Hunch Punch, but the color is a perfect match for the gumbo in Mama Odie’s bathtub. To make it taste good, I added sour mix as well as Tabasco simple syrup as a little nod to Tiana. It was delicious!

Recipe: Serves 1

Ingredients:

3 oz of hunch punch moonshine (It usually is sold in a jar)

½ oz of lemon juice

½ oz of lime juice

1.5 oz of regular simple syrup

½ oz of Tabasco simple syrup (see below)

Club soda

Instructions:

Add the moonshine, lemon juice, lime juice, regular simple syrup, and Tabasco simple syrup to a jar and shake. Multiply ingredients depending on how many servings you are making. I like to premix cocktails the day before Movie Night and store them in the refrigerator to save time with the preparations.

When it’s time to serve– Add ice to your bathtubs and evenly pour your premixed cocktail into the bathtubs. Top the rest of the bathtubs with club soda and serve.

How to make Tabasco simple syrup- In a small saucepan, add ¼ cup of sugar and ¼ cup of water. Mix on medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and mix in 2-3 dashes of Tabasco. Let cool, and the simple syrup is ready to use.

I thought it would be fun to represent the climax of the plot, where they finally defeated Dr. Facilier, by creating an interactive desert where we break the talisman as Tiana breaks it in the film. To accomplish this, I made a round chocolate mold with the red markings of the talisman. New Orleans has a lot of French influence, so I also had macarons underneath the chocolate mold for us to eat along with the chocolate.

How to make the mold:

I used this mold to make a perfect round shape. To make the red markings, I used red melting chocolate and a small food brush to paint the red markings. I then used milk chocolate to cover the entire sphere, covering up the red markings.

How to melt the chocolate– Use this method for both the red melting chocolate and milk chocolate chips. Add ¼ cup of chocolate chips, ½ tsp of coconut oil to a microwave-safe dish. Microwave the dish with chocolate for 15 seconds. Take the dish out and mix well. Then microwave for an additional 15 seconds and stir well again. Keep microwaving for 15 seconds and stir until the chocolate is melted. It’s important not to overheat the chocolate because the high sugar content will make it burn faster.

Freeze the mold, and after about an hour, you should be able to gently pop it out of the mold with your finger. If it doesn’t budge easily, it needs more time in the freezer.

Once you pop it out, you can plate it on top of the macaroons and keep it in the refrigerator until it’s time to serve. When you serve, make sure you use a heavy-bottomed, sturdy glass to break the mold. You’ll have to use a little bit of force to break it.

I usually like to serve a sweet dish as the last dish but I love Jambalaya so I was going to fit it into this Movie Night no matter what. LOL!

Naveen serves something to Tiana’s mom while the music is playing and they’re celebrating all her dreams coming true so I thought it a great time to make my Jambalaya dreams come true too!

I followed a video for this recipe from someone from Louisiana, and I’m so glad I did because it was absolutely fantastic. I made a big batch, and we ate from it all week!

Here is the video I followed! She has the full recipe on her post.