Celebrate May the Fourth With Braised Shaak Roast

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle

DisneyBizJournal.com

May 4, 2024

 

Bright suns, friends!  Hope you are reveling in your Star Wars fandom today, or for those of you talking a walk on the Dark Side, enjoy your “Revenge of the Fifth” celebrations tomorrow.

Several years ago, my son gifted me the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: The Official Black Spire Outpost Cookbook for Christmas, and each year, we break it out for May the Fourth and choose a different recipe to try for Star Wars Day.  Some of the recipes are more involved than others, while some require more readily available ingredients and less skill to assemble.

If you aren’t familiar with the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge: The Official Black Spire Outpost Cookbook, it is a fun read. The book is told in the voice of Chef Strono Tuggs, known as “Cookie,” the head chef at Maz Kanata’s castle.  Cookie quotes in the book, “Food is art,” and the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge cookbook is truly art.  Even if you have no intention of actually whipping up the recipes in the book, the photography and illustrations in the book are beautiful to flip through, even for non-cooks. The backstories Cookie shares in his discussion of each recipe contribute a whole lot of depth to the Star Wars universe, and hardcore fans will find a lot to enjoy just in the narration in Cookie’s manuscript.  (The book is brought to you, in the real world, by authors Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Marc Sumerak, who have a number of genre cookbooks to their credit, and photographer Ted Thomas.)

Now, on to the recipe we selected for this year’s feast and movie marathon.  Chef Cookie explains that this particular dish is from the planet Naboo, where herds of shaak roam the grasslands. He assures us that this recipe is so delicious that it is “sold out as soon as I open the pot.”

  
We agree. Not only was this a pretty easy dinner to whip up, but it was one of the meals we’ve enjoyed the most from the Galaxy’s Edge cookbook (which, admittedly, sometimes has some very strange recipes!)

If you want to join in the Star Wars fun this year, here's the recipe we used from the Black Spire cookbook.  (Side note: DisneyBizJournal does not receive any compensation from the sale of the book – we just like it!)

Ingredients:

 

2 or 3 pounds pot roast (beef round roast) 
1/4 cup soy sauce, or more to taste
3 cloves garlic 
Water as needed
8 ounces Cavatelli or Orecchiette pasta
6 Tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ cups whole pearl onions, peeled
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
1 heaping cup kale, torn into small pieces
½ cup rainbow carrots, peeled and shredded
1-2 Tablespoons seasoned panko bread crumbs
Salt & pepper

 
Directions:

 

1. Place the beef in a medium saucepan along with the soy sauce and garlic. Fill with just  enough water to cover the beef, then set over medium heat, cover and cook for about 2 hours, until the meat has started to soften and is cooked through.

 

2. Using a pair of forks, divide the beef into smaller pieces, and allow to cook about 1 hour more, until the beef is very tender. Remove to a separate plate and keep warm. 

 

3. Once the beef is cooked, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta. Add the pasta and cook according to package instructions, until soft, but still a little al dente. Drain the pasta and keep warm.  

4. In a medium sauté pan or skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Cook the pearl onions and mushrooms for about 5 minutes, until soft, then add about 1/2 cup or so of the beef liquid, stirring until it has been absorbed. 

5. Remove from the heat, and stir in the kale until it is wilted. Add about 1/2 cup of the beef liquid to each serving bowl, then divide the pasta between them. Stir the mushroom, onion, and kale mix in with the cooked pasta and keep warm. 

6. Place the cooked beef on top of the pasta, then follow with the carrots and a pinch of the seasoned bread crumbs. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 

 

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

 

Get The Disney Planner: The TO DO List Solution by Ray Keating. More information at

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Fourth of July, Star Wars Style

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle

DisneyBizJournal.com

July 6, 2022

 

A pup recovering from surgery and receiving medication every few hours kept us tethered to our house over the Fourth of July holiday. Facing a stretch of three days of unstructured time, my son declared it a “Star Wars marathon” weekend. 

 

He broke out the Galaxy’s Edge cookbook he’d bought me several Christmases ago, and paged through the recipes to find some dishes that would coordinate with his selection of movies, carefully linking recipes geographically and thematically to the films.  I readily agreed to his plan for the weekend, expecting him to pull out, at most, three or four recipes for the main meals of the weekend.  We ended up with a dozen recipes to test out.

Our guide for the weekend’s culinary journey was Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge: The Official Black Spire Outpost Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Marc Sumerak. It’s a fun book which has served us well in the past, with a few caveats (such as the fact that the Ronto Wrap recipe in the book looks, and tastes,  NOTHING like the delicacy you know and love from Batuu). Beautiful full color photos accompany the recipes, and origin stories and tales from Intergalactic cook Strono “Cookie” Tuggs are shared throughout.  Even if you aren’t a chef, the book is an entertaining read, and the recipes are offered at various levels of difficulty.

 

Armed with pages of instructions, bags of supplies, and new batteries in the remote control, we began our adventure. And almost came to a grinding halt.  Our first recipe was a disaster of epic proportions. For starters, the picture of the Sunrise Caf, a coffee-based drink, was photographed as a glass of basically black coffee.  Our finished product looked so different (and off-putting) that we thought we must have done something wrong, and we poured it out and started over. Attempt number two wasn’t much better.  The flavor of the drink was somewhat Christmasy, but the color was a kind of burnt orange and a touch on the oily side, due, we assume, to the coconut oil in the recipe. To put it kindly, it was not a success.  

 

We tried a much more enjoyable beverage on the next round. The Coruscant Cooler was a sweet-tart blend with cranberry, dark cherry puree, bourbon, vermouth and lime juice, along with a viewing of The Phantom Menace. (In the parks, the Coruscant Cooler is $16.00 at Ronto Roasters.)

The Phantom Menace was followed up with Attack of the Clones, to which we added a serving of Moogan Tea, a chocolate milk and iced tea concoction that was much tastier than it probably sounds on paper! Dinner that night was an entrée of Yobshrimp Noodle Salad from Naboo, since that was where our movie was based, and it was delicious enough that we will offer it for dinner again in the future. The soy sauce and lime marinade gave it a bit of tang, and you can never go wrong with lots of chilled shrimp.

The next day found us queuing up Revenge of the Sith on the television, and lining up chicken and bread in the kitchen.  It was a much more fruitful operation, and the Fried Endorian Tip Yip and Mustafarian Lava Buns were well-received.  In fact, the Lava Buns will probably make their way into our regular dining rotation. They weren’t terribly difficult to make, and were kind of like a pretzel roll in flavor.  The hardest part was actually waiting for the dough to rise.  And the house smelled wonderful with all that yeasty goodness baking up. Plus, it was kind of fun to see the black outer shell of the bread crackle during baking to show the red dough underneath, looking just like a lava rock.  The addition of a few pinches of coarse salt to the outside of the dough also gave the “rocks” a bit of texture and sparkle.

 

Our libations during the movies that evening included the Blurrgfire, a lemony blend with pomegranate juice that was allegedly developed by one of the bartenders at Oga’s Cantina on Batuu, according to our book narrator. In the world of Hollywood Studio’s Oga’s, the Blurrgfire goes for $7.00. It’s normally served non-alcoholic, but we added a touch of watermelon rum to our version.  

 

The Endorian Tip Yip was basically fried chicken strips served over mashed “chokeroot” (with artichoke hearts and parsnips) and a bright green “Gurreck” sauce made from lots of fresh herbs. As a note to those of you trying to order the Tip Yip at Docking Bay 7 in Hollywood Studios ($15.49), it’s a slightly different take than the cookbook. The park’s version has a mac-and-cheese side. (Chokeroot supply chain issues in the Outer Rim, presumably.)

Our final day’s entertainment on the Fourth of July completed our marathon with the original trilogy of Star Wars movies, and a fancier dessert. We cheated a little on our main entrée, using the Pitmaster’s Choice as a burger, rather than as the longer-baked jerky it was meant to be, and paired it with a side of Xizor Salad with its blue Chadian dressing and parmesan crisps. 

For dessert, we baked up the Wroshyr Tree Cake, a lovely chocolate frosted spice cake with crushed pistachio “moss” on the outer edges, designed to look like a section of a tree ring.  Accompanying the films were two non-cookbook recipes: the Yub Nub, a citrusy-pineapple drink, in honor of our Ewok friends in the movie; and Blue Milk, which a quick google search brought to us from the internet, rather than the Galaxy’s Edge book. (The on-planet Yub Nub comes in a souvenir glass at Oga’s in Hollywood Studios for $45.00!) 

And in case you felt bad for us that we missed the various local fireworks’ shows, don’t be sad. George Lucas provided ample fireworks in the final movie of our marathon, Return of the Jedi. And we didn’t need to find parking or fight the crowds! 

 

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

 

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