NASAlmon Soufflé (Fancy Space Food)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Maurice Murdock, plus Sara Mitchell, Maggie Masetti, Lynn Chandler, and Vickie Kloeris of NASA)

For the milestone 50th “recipe” on FancyFastFood.com, we’ve gone beyond the realms of fast food, to make food fancification boldly go where no bun has gone before! Now that the U.S. manned space program is going on hiatus, we’ve teamed up with some folks at NASA to try and convert some “leftover” freeze-dried astronaut food and make it look fancy — but not before having fun touring around NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as seen in this video:

Ingredients (from NASA’s Johnson Space Center):

• 1 pack of chipotle snack bread
• 1 pouch of outer-space-ready Chicken Of The Sea pink salmon
• 1 package of freeze-dried asparagus
• 1 package of freeze-dried vegetable quiche
• water

First, make sure you turn on the gravity if you’re in Zero G; otherwise keep your items from floating away with the velcro patches that are found on all the unopened space food packets. (You can stick it to your socks if you want.) Next, open the packet of freeze-dried asparagus and put the contents in a sealable container; add in 50 ml of hot water and cover it to let it hydrate for five minutes. Do the same with the freeze-dried vegetable quiche, but with 100 ml of hot water.

The chipotle snack bread needs no hydration, so tear it into smaller pieces and put it in a food processor. Add in the contents of the Chicken of the Sea pouch, followed by the hydrated asparagus — saving 3-4 pieces for garnish — and the vegetable quiche. A proper soufflé on Earth uses eggs, so the quiche suffices for that, even though it’s not going to rise properly — although it might in Zero G.

Blend everything down to a consistent dough and then scoop it into a fancy ramekin. Bake the faux space soufflé in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes at 477.594 Kelvin (400°F), and then let it cool.

Garnish the top with the extra pieces of green asparagus for a touch of color, and then 3… 2… 1… blast off! (Note: May not necessarily taste good on Earth, but may taste better in orbit.)

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.

Papa Delle’s Puttanesca (Fancy Papa John’s)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food

Pizza is a versatile “ingredient” in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen. Thus far, we’ve fancified Domino’s into a Chinese-inspired Dao Mi Noh Chow Mein and Pizza Hut into an Indian-esque Chicken Pizza Masala. This time we’re turning to national pizza chain Papa John’s to make an Italian-inspired dish: pappardelle alla puttanesca. This may not seem like a stretch (Italian pasta from pizza?), but let’s not forget that Papa John’s roots aren’t in Italy but in Indiana, home of Ball State University.

Speaking of balls (how’s that for a stretch?), you’ve got to have a pretty big set of them to take Papa John’s “better ingredients” for a “better pizza”, and repurpose them to make a “better sauce” fit for… a whore. That’s what puttanesca is literally derived from Italian, anyway. Thankfully, Papa John has olives, onions, anchovies, tomatoes, and other toppings for us to improvise with, so you can bend over and sell yourself for a bowl of fake pasta:

Ingredients (from Papa John’s):

• 1 large thin crust pizza with light sauce and no cheese, topped with anchovies, onions, jalapeños, banana peppers, olives, and double tomatoes (request that it not be sliced)
• 1 little cup of Papa John’s Garlic Dipping Sauce
• PLUS: organic basil (for an extra touch of irony)

First, take off all the toppings: the tomatoes, the banana peppers, the jalapeños, the olives, the anchovies, and the onions. Then use a fork and scrape off the sauce and any residual toppings left on the crust, and save it for later.

We ordered the pizza unsliced, but now it’s time to take a knife or pizza slicer to the empty thin crust. Slice it into strips — each about an inch in width — and then cut off the hard crusty edges on the ends. Rinse your newly formed mock pappardelle noodles in a colander.

Next, the sauce. In lieu of fresh garlic and olive oil, start with the cup of Papa John’s Garlic Dipping Sauce; it’s full of oil anyway. Pour it into a skillet over a medium heat, add in some onions, toss in the anchovies, and sauté. To substitute a proper puttanesca’s chilies, dice some banana peppers; to substitute the capers, dice some caper-colored jalapeños. Add them to the pan, along with the olives. Dice the tomato slices and add them to the mix as well, along with the extra sauce you scraped from the crust. Stir and sauté it all until it’s all blended together.

Finally, the plating. Place the mock pappardelle noodles into a fancy pasta bowl, and then top it with the “whore sauce” you just made. Garnish with an ironic basil leaf, and presto: a mock bowl of pappardelle alla puttanesca fit for a whore, or your papa, or whomever has the balls to try it.

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.

Quiznoa Salad (Fancy Quiznos)
by Erik of Fancy Fast Food (with support from Susannah Masur)

In our recent food obsessed culture, foodies strive to find new foods that they enjoy, mostly so that they can blog or tweet about it later. One of these recently “discovered” foods is quinoa (pronounced KEE-noaah), a grain-like vegetable from the Andean countries of South America so great in flavor, texture, and above all nutrients, that vegans just won’t shut up about it. And although it looks like a grain similar to couscous, it is technically not a grain — an ambiguity that even some rabbis exploit, deeming it an acceptable food to eat during the grain-abstaining days of Passover. Truly, quinoa is one exceptional food, and you don’t even need to be a vegan, an observant Jew (or both) to partake in its goodness.

However, according to a New York Times article, the problem with quinoa is that due to its increasing popularity in rich North American and European countries, the prices have driven up the cost in the poorer nations they come from, like Bolivia. Richer nations’ hunger for quinoa is actually stripping away the nutritious food that Bolivians have been consuming for centuries. So what is a socially-conscious person to do? One suggestion: fake the quinoa using fast food. Here’s how:

Ingredients (from Quiznos):

• 1 Veggie Sub without guacamole or cheese on Italian white bread
• 1 cup of water
• condiment cups of banana peppers and pickles

First, scoop off all the vegetables off the bread and put them in a mixing bowl. We’ll deal with that later. For now, we are going to transform the bread into our grain-like super vegetable. We here in the Fancy Fast Food kitchen have tried doing this using a food processor with different blades, and even a hand grinder, but nothing quite gave the bread the proper round shape of quinoa. The only method that works — as tedious as it is — is to roll each individual piece by hand.

Because Quiznos prides itself on toasting their subs, we’ll have to moisten the bread. Pour all the water into a skillet and bring it to a boil. Place the pieces of bread — toastier side down — in a steam basket, and let them moisten and soften up before handling them. Then, pinch off a little bit of the bread’s insides, and simply roll it around with your finger until it becomes a small ball. Now repeat this process about a hundred times (or as long as you can stand it).

Dice the sliced tomatoes and put them in the mixing bowl with the rest of the vegetables. Add in the banana peppers and pickles. Then fold in the faux quinoa, and toss it all together with a big fork or rubber spatula.

Voilà! Quiznoa Salad! (pronounced KEEZ-noaah SA-lad) Now try and substitute this for quinoa in either a rich or poor country, so that the food demands can be met!

If you are viewing this recipe in an aggregator (like tumblr’s Dashboard), or as a reblogged post, please check out the real website at FancyFastFood.com.