THE STAR TREK COOKBOOK - Chelsea Monroe-Cassel


 I was going to start this review with the comment that we've finally seen it all ... we've now got a Star Trek cookbook. But as I went to snag the cover image to post on my blog, I learned that we didn't finally get a Star Trek cookbook ... there have been a few of them over the years.  I wish I had been aware of them ... for the past twenty years I've been the primary cook in the house, and I think I would have tried more ST recipes for the family if I had known about them.

But to this book...

This is an interesting mix of cookbook and coffee-table book. While I read this from my computer, it appears to be a larger sized book with a lot of glossy photos of the various foods. You could definitely put this on your coffee table for your friends and visitors to pick up, thumb through, and create some conversation.

But while it works as a coffee-table book, the primary purpose is as a cookbook and this works quite well. There are some nice variations of some traditional foods ("Mashed Andorian Tuber Root" anyone?) and, more interesting to me, some pretty unusual recipes.

So what makes it Star Trek? Ah ... this is what I thought was really great - the food and drinks presented in this book have made an appearance (or at least a mention) in the Star Trek franchise. For those of us who were first fans of the original series, one of the first foods that comes to mind is probably Plomeek Soup.  Yup, that recipe's here. But so are recipes of food mentioned in The Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks.  There's even a recipe for a food mentioned in a Star Trek book, and a Star Trek video game (oh...these look good!)


I forgot to mention, there's also recipes from Deep Space Nine.  A lot of them.  Which makes sense since since a main character ran a bar that served food.

There are also drink recipes included in this book (I don't think I'm up to trying a Klingon Bloodwine).

Each recipe is tagged with the culture it comes from (ie, Human, Andorian, Klingon, etc) and also which series mentions or shows it.

I mentioned at the beginning that one of the first foods that comes to mind for the Original Series fans is Plomeek Soup, but it's also possible that the first food that comes to mind are the brightly colored food cubes that we see from time to time.  Those are in here, too.

This looks like a lot of fun and I regret I'm currently on a diet, but I do intend to try many of these.  Maybe tonight I'll go an make myself a Quadrotriticale Salad.

Looking for a good book? The Star Trek Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel is a beautiful-looking, Star Trek-themed cookbook with lots of great recipes to offer and insight on their origins.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

4-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

The Star Trek Cookbook

author: Chelsea Monroe-Cassel

publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek

ISBN: 1982186283

hardcover, 192 pages

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