Do you want to throw the perfect OSIRIS-REx watch party, but you donโt know what snacks to serve?
University of Arizona executive chef Michael Omo has you covered with a full menu of โO-Rex-cipes,โ perfect for eating and drinking your way through NASAโs live broadcast of Sundayโs historic space landing.
Omo and his team have come up with 11 drinks and dishes to boost your early mission brunch (the returning space capsule filled with asteroid samples hits the atmosphere at 7:42 a.m. Tucson time) and the after party.
Savory dishes include Asteroid and Meat-eorites (baked meatballs), Orbit Discs Reflector (foil-wrapped chilaquiles) and Egg Bennu-dict, named for the asteroid OSIRIS-REx landed on in 2020. Those can be paired with the Cruciferous Capsule Salad or the Chocolate-Coated Asteroid Belt with Space Dust Molecules, basically chocolate-covered bacon sprinkled with peanut butter dust that reconstitutes in your mouth.
For dessert, Omo and company have baked up Cosmic Cake, Rocket Pops and miniature almond and pistachio cakes called Sample Returns that can be packaged and attached to little parachutes so your party guests can literally launch them and watch them land.
And you can wash all of that down with a Mission Control Siphon Coffee (dry ice makes it smoke), a signature cocktail called an Always Sunny in Tucson or a Zero Gravity Mocktail, which is a lavender lemonade made with something called butterfly water.
Omo oversees all aspects of the cooking and dining experience at the UA as the universityโs director of culinary excellence and quality assurance.
The space-themed recipes designed by him and his team are available online at osirisrex.arizona.edu/osiris-rex-watch-party.
