posted 08-30-2010 10:31 PM               

The competition blasts off this week as an astronaut orbiting Earth blinks onto a large screen, instructing the chefs on this week's elimination challenge -- to come up with space food creations that do not taste like moon rocks. The winner will have their dish served in space.

posted 08-31-2010 12:07 PM               

NASA Presents Challenge to Top Chef Contestants

A new dish is being prepared for astronauts working in space. Bravo TV's Emmy-award winning reality show "Top Chef" will feature a special challenge for the five remaining "chef'testants." The winning contestant will have his or her recipe prepared by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and flown on a future space shuttle mission.

Food preparation and taste have come a long way since the Apollo era. Today, the menu for astronauts includes 180 food and beverage items. These include tomato basil soup, chicken fajitas, shrimp cocktail, scrambled eggs and beef tips with mushrooms. They can also munch on nuts, granola bars and cookies. Beverages come in powdered form and include coffee, tea, apple cider, orange juice and lemonade.

As much as possible, NASA tries to provide astronauts with meals that look and taste like those on Earth. Crew members continually say that when they're in such an unfamiliar environment so far away, food is one of the main things that reminds them of home.

On Sept. 1, the chefs will participate in a challenge to create a tasty meal for the astronauts. They will be restricted by the same nutritional guidelines that NASA food scientists follow in the Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston.

This episode will feature the space program with portions shot at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The “Top Chef” production crew, accompanied by head judge Tom Colicchio and the five contestants, visited Goddard and filmed in the Network Integration Center.

Rumor has it that former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and current astronauts Sandy Magnus and Leland Melvin will make appearances.

The episode will air on Bravo at 10 p.m. EDT.

posted 09-03-2010 05:08 PM               

Hold the horseradish: Top Chef's short ribs to be 'deconstructed' for spaceflight

Angelo Sosa's short ribs are going to the International Space Station.

As a 'cheftestant' on Bravo's Emmy Award-winning cable reality show "Top Chef," Sosa won Wednesday's episode where the challenge was to develop a dish for astronauts to eat in space.

posted 11-04-2010 11:38 AM               

'Top Chef's' Winning Short Ribs Set to Fly on Discovery

An award-winning "Top Chef" recipe is set to fly to the International Space Station on Discovery's STS-133 mission.

Chef Angelo Sosa's recipe for short ribs won a recent challenge on Bravo's Emmy Award-winning cable reality TV show "Top Chef" to develop a dish for astronauts to eat in space. The announcement was made on an episode of the program that aired in early September.

Sosa's winning recipe --"ginger-lacquered short ribs with pea puree, pickled mushrooms and horseradish creme fraiche" -- was evaluated by food scientists in the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The dish was processed, freeze-dried and temporarily stored in cans before being packaged for flight in late October.

To flight package the short ribs, a single serving of the product was vacuum packaged into an Extended Duration Orbiter, or EDO, rehydratable package. This package allows the product to be rehydrated with hot or cold water before being eaten in orbit. The packaged short ribs were then shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 12 portions provided will allow both the space station and STS-133 crews to try the product.

Food scientists remained as true to the original Sosa recipe as possible. Some aspects of the original recipe were not completely compatible with the freeze-drying process, so minor modifications had to be made. In addition, the original dish was served with components at different temperatures. The final product, of course, was not able to replicate that.

Upon tasting the processed product, food scientists were very pleased with the result.

"The freeze-dried short ribs are very good," said Michele Perchonok, NASA food scientist and manager of the Shuttle Food System. "The short rib recipe is unlike any other product that NASA provides to the astronauts. It will add variety to the astronauts' menu."

Astronauts report having a diminished sense of taste in space, so the pickled mushrooms and kick of horseradish will be appreciated.

Sosa has cooked alongside Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Jean Georges), Alain Ducasse (Spoon Food & Wine) and Stephen Starr (Buddakan). He is the chef and owner of Xie Xie ("thank you" in Mandarin), an Asian sandwich shop in New York.