Ad Astra Review - C3PO by Ef Deal

What Is It? Chopped vegetables, pineapple, and pecans in cream cheese.

Haiku
Cream cheese and peppers
Pineapple, onion, pecans
It's C3PO

Review: C3PO is a pretty simple recipe. It more or less consists of a can of crushed pineapple with chopped bell pepper, onion, and pecans all mixed into a pile of cream cheese. That is basically it. The only change I made from the text of the recipe was that I used a red bell pepper instead of a green bell pepper, mostly because I had a red bell pepper on hand. The end result is a spread than can be used on crackers or fresh vegetables. The end result is also delicious.

I must admit, I was a little bit apprehensive about this recipe, mostly because it is so very simple. There are no spices or anything else added to the mixture to flavor it up. Despite my misgivings, this recipe turned out to be quite flavorful, with the sweetness of the pineapple combining with the sweetness of the bell pepper to give the whole a fresh taste that was tempered just enough by the onion so that the whole wasn't cloying. The only element that really kind of disappeared were the pecans, which I really couldn't taste and didn't seem to provide much additional crunch. The dip is a bit chunky, as all of the ingredients are basically just diced and mixed with the cream cheese, so if one wanted something smoother I suppose you could run it through a food processor or blend it with a stick mixer, but there is not really a need to do so other than personal preference.

I made this as an appetizer for Thanksgiving, and we had it with crackers and an assortment of vegetables. It went over well with everyone, with the redhead going so far as to declare it to be the best recipe from Ad Astra thus far.

One final note on the name, for anyone who doesn't get it: It is an acronym that results in a Star Wars reference. It is cream cheese for the "C", pineapple, pepper, and pecans for the "3P"'s and onion for the "O". Sadly, the recipe doesn't actually look like a golden robot, which would have been cool. It is quite tasty nonetheless.

Previous recipe in Ad Astra: Big Bang Brussels Sprouts by Sean Williams
Next recipe in Ad Astra: "Chilly" Sauce by Nancy Springer

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Ad Astra Review - Apple Crumble by Chet Gottfried

What Is It? Sliced apples with a brown sugar and ginger sauce topped with a buttery cinnamon flavored crust.

Haiku
Delicious apples
Made even better with some
Cinnamon and crust

Review: I know I said that I was going to make, try, and review all of the recipe's in the Ad Astra cookbook in the order they appear in the book, but I needed a dessert recipe for a gathering of my game group, so I skipped ahead a bit.

I am glad I did. This is a really good apple crumble.

Apple recipes are, in my experience, surprisingly tricky. Some recipes call for far too much seasoning - too much cinnamon, too much ginger, or too much nutmeg, and the resulting mix overpowers the apple flavor. Others call for too little, and the result is bland. This recipe, on the other hand, strikes almost exactly the right balance, with just enough cinnamon and ginger, and a crumble topping that is perfectly balanced by the apple base.

The other thing about this recipe is that it is really quite simple and easy to make. The entire recipe only has nine ingredients, and two of those are apples and water. The recipe only takes about ten or fifteen minutes to make - and most of that time is taken up peeling and slicing the apples. If you had an apple peeler, you could probably cut the prep time down to five minutes or so.

The recipe says to eat it warm and with vanilla ice cream, so we did. It was glorious. This is easily one of the best apple recipes I have had, and as one might guess, I highly recommend it. If you like apple dishes, you should try it out.

Previous recipe in Ad Astra: Wizard's Piglets in Blankets by Rosemary Jones
Next recipe in Ad Astra: Pudding Course: Apple Fritters by Gail Carriger

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Ad Astra Review - Anouchka's Grandmother's Salmon Pâté by Cat Sparks

What Is It? Salmon blended with cream cheese and spring onions covered with chopped pecans and chives.

Haiku
This needs a kick of
Cayenne pepper for flavor
And use red salmon

Review: The second recipe in the Ad Astra Cookbook under the heading "Savory Snacks" is one for salmon pâté from Cat Sparks. I tried this recipe out on my regular game group, and it got mixed reviews from them, mostly because they didn't like the texture (and one just doesn't like fish, which I did not know until then, but didn't surprise me at all).

The redhead and I, on the other hand, found this to be quite good. The recipe is basically canned red salmon, cream cheese, sour cream, spring onions, and cayenne pepper blended together with a coating of finely chopped pecans and chives. The recipe is pretty easy, and doesn't require an oven or any equipment other than bowls, knives and some sort of blending equipment - the recipe says to use a food processor, but I used a stick mixer which worked just fine. We ate it on crackers, which seems like the ideal way to eat it, although the redhead suggested possibly adding it to pasta with an alfredo sauce, a suggestion that seems like it would be worth investigating.

The instructions say that the recipe makes a lot more than one might expect, and that seems to be accurate. When I blended the cream cheese and salmon, the volume of the mixture ballooned quite noticeably. I suggest being generous with the spices, especially the cayenne pepper, as the mix is just a little bland unless one does so. Even though you are using red salmon which has more flavor than pink salmon, the mix of fish and cream cheese doesn't really have much kick on its own. The recipe says to shape the mixture into a log, but it was so sticky that the best I could manage was an kind of half sphere. The pecans and chives also add a lot to the dish, with their crunch adding a needed break from the creamy texture of the pâté itself.

Overall, this was a really good recipe. I can see this being something that I'll bring to family holiday gathering as an appetizer. If I was going to make this for anything less than a large gathering, I would definitely halve the recipe. The redhead and I have been eating it for three days now and we still have some left. On the other hand, it is good enough that we're not tired of it yet, so you could take that as an endorsement.

Previous recipe in Ad Astra: Ajvar by K.V. Johansen
Next recipe in Ad Astra: Bastilla by Erin M. Hartshorn

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Ad Astra Review - Ajvar by K.V. Johansen

What Is It? A roasted eggplant and bell pepper spread flavored with garlic and chili sauce.

Haiku
This is really sweet
Much sweeter than expected
But still good on bread

Review: The first recipe in Ad Astra: The 50^th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook is one that K.V. Johansen discovered when some of her books were translated into Macedonian and she began traveling to the Republic of Macedonia, presumably to promote her work.

Ajvar is an eggplant and bell pepper concoction flavored with garlic, cider vinegar or lemon juice, and hot sauce that can be served as a spread on naan or bread. I have to say that this recipe really doesn't taste anything like I expected it to. The roasted eggplant is almost completely overwhelmed by the sweetness of the roasted bell peppers, and even though the recipe calls for a quite generous amount of roasted garlic, it isn't really noticeable either.

After roasting all the vegetables, peeling the eggplant, garlic, and bell pepper, and then puréeing the lot (I used a stick mixer rather than a food processor), the end result was a lot runnier than I had thought it would be. I don't think I added too much liquid - I didn't add any more olive oil than had been used in the roasting process and I only put in a little bit of cider vinegar and hot sauce. I was anticipating something more hummus-like in thickness, but this turned out to be more "uncooked pumpkin pie filling" in texture.

The flavor of the ajvar is basically that of a sweet bell pepper. I was expecting more of a kick, but even when I went back and added more hot sauce, salt, and pepper, the flavor of the mixture was still mostly just bell pepper sweetness. This isn't bad, but it is blander than I was prepared for. The redhead and I ate it with naan bread, and she had a similar reaction to mine. Her exact quote was "That was a lot of work to eat puréed bell peppers". I can't really disagree. It wasn't really all that much work compared to many other recipes, but the end result seemed kind of underwhelming. It might be improved by increasing the amount of garlic in the recipe (although the recipe itself calls for the reasonably generous amount of eight cloves of garlic), or reducing the number of bell peppers used.

Overall, this was decent, but it didn't knock my socks off. I might try it again, but if I do I'll probably add some extra spices or garlic or something. The redhead suggested adding a can of chickpeas to thicken it up, which might be a good adjustment as well.

Next recipe in Ad Astra: Anouchka's Grandmother's Salmon Pâté by Cat Sparks

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The Ad Astra Cooking Project

I recently acquired Ad Astra: The 50^th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook, a collection of recipes from members of the Science Fiction Writers of America edited by Cat Rambo and Fran Wilde. As with all things, I intend to review it, but reviewing a cookbook poses a challenge that most other books do not: There is really no way to accurately review the book based upon reading it. Cookbooks are interactive - you can only appreciate them if you cook the recipes and eat them. So that is exactly what I am going to do.

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred recipes in the book, so I'm not going to make them all at once, or even in the near future. I'm planning on making, trying, and reviewing about one recipe a week for as long as there are untried recipes in the book, starting with the first one and going through them in order. As I review the recipes, I'll post links to them here, adding to the list on an ongoing basis. I'm saying that I'm planning on doing that, but it is unlikely to be a hard and fast schedule: Some weeks I might review more than one recipe, in some weeks I might not be able to review any, but that's the plan.

The book was created to raise funds for the SFWA Legal Fund to support writers in need. The overall theme of the recipes in the book is supposed to be "party", working on the theory that writers know how to throw a party. A lot of the recipes were solicited for this work, but some were originally collected by Astrid and Greg Bear for a cookbook that was never published. The introductory material includes Connie Willis passing on some excellent cooking advice from Charles Brown, and Carrie Vaughn explaining how to create a cocktail laboratory, including a couple of recipes for some classic cocktails to try. Larry Niven contributes a chapter on how to serve hundreds of cups of Irish Coffee to eager convention-attendees, an essay that is clearly informed by lots of experience.

Jennifer Stevenson describes how to throw a pig roast, which is an involved process that should only be attempted by those with lots of room, sufficient handyman skills to do a lot of nuts and bolts work as part of their cooking, and lots of time to cook. The end result does seem like it would be delicious. Ken Schneyer and Janice Okoomian give a detailed account of how they hold a Prancing Pony party ever year in late September to commemorate Frodo's arrival in Bree, complete with three recipes. These recipes, like the cocktails in Vaughn and Niven's chapters, aren't listed in the table of contents, but I'll get to them and try them anyway.

Esther Friesner gives some opinions on cake, mostly extolling its virtues. Ricia Mainhardt gives just over a dozen recipes for sweets for one, designed to be cooked in a mug in a microwave. I don't actually have a microwave, so trying these out will have to wait until I do, but as I estimate that it will probably take me something on the order of four years to work through all of these recipes, I figure I have plenty of time to get one. The final introductory piece is by Michael J. Martinez, and discusses the joys of home brewing beer, with some loose instructions on how to go about it. Just as I don't have a microwave, I don't really have space to let a five gallon bucket sit for two to four weeks at a time fermenting beer, but there's a decent chance I will at some point in the future, so I might be able to give home brewing a try.

That's all the introductory material. Here are the recipes. There will only be a few at first. I'll be adding to this list as I get to each one in turn:

Savory Snacks
Ajvar from K.V. Johansen
Anouchka's Grandmother's Salmon Pâté by Cat Sparks
Bastilla by Erin M. Hartshorn
Big Bang Brussel Sprouts by Sean Williams
C3PO by Ef Deal

Sweet Snacks and Desserts
Apple Crumble by Chet Gottfried
Pudding Course: Apple Fritters by Gail Carriger
Apricot Mascarpone Poppers by Julie Jansen

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