From The Straits Times    |

Celebrities to nosh on chicken pot pie and tacos at Oscars post-partyGold-dusted chocolate statuettes of Oscar, lobster tacos and gourmet chicken pot will be among some of the 50 hors d’oeuvres that will be served to the Hollywood glitterati at the Governor’s Ball on Sunday.

For the 18th consecutive year, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck will be presiding over the post-Oscars dinner which will serve more than 1,500 of the most important and powerful players from the film industry.

Veterans of the awards will find, however, that this year’s menu will be a departure from previous dinners which were formal, sit-down meals. Instead, Puck has taken cues from the rising popularity of shared plates and opted to create a cocktail-style party with one-bite appetizers and small plates that will be circulated around the room all night.

Foods will be familiar, but given a touch of Hollywood glamour à la Puck. For example, chicken pot pie is souped up with shaved black truffles, and tacos taken to another level with lobster, tomatoes and pickled shallots. Beet salad is likewise embellished with pistachio butter, burrata (fresh Italian cheese) and citrus balsamic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, like the ubiquitous popularity of 3D films, dessert will be served with a pair of 3D glasses which will bring Oscar to life thanks to a specially coated icing.

Aside from sushi platters and cold appetizers, Puck will also be serving Chinois lamb with cilantro-mint vinaigrette; crab and lobster Louie with horseradish panna cotta and marinated tomatoes; Shanghai lobster with coconut curry, jasmine rice and pickled ginger, and gold-wrapped potatoes with caviar and crème fraîche, reports the LA Times.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether this year’s Oscar menu will spark the kind of controversy that ignited over the Golden Globes menu, in which the gold-garnished menu stoked the ire of poverty groups on the heels of the ‘We are the 99 percent’ movement.

One of the desserts, for example, was a chocolate pudding with an almond crunch terrine, garnished with acacia honey, caramel and fresh berries, sprinkled with edible gold flakes at $135 a gram.

Food & Wine magazine has a host of Wolfgang Puck recipes like potato pancakes with smoked salmon, caviar and dill cream, and Corn and Bacon Soup with Jalapeño Crema.

The 84th Academy Awards airs Sunday, February 26 at 7 pm EST on US cable channel ABC and on several channels around the world as a live broadcast and re-broadcast.