Alain Ducasse: Hyper Chef -- Now Serving Mars

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Once the food of astronauts (remember Tang?) became the food of earthlings. This week during the International Food Exhibition SIAL in Paris, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced its plans to spice up interplanetary space travel. ESA realizes that travel to planets would require food storage exceeding storage space, so now a classic element in science fiction -- space agriculture -- is being researched, according to Christophe Lasseur, ESA biological life support coordinator. The initial objective is that non-earth grown food cover 5-10% during travel and 40-50% on Mars. And then, what to do with food grown in space? To answer this question, ESA turned to the French, who invented the hypermarche and enlisted hyper chef to the royals Alain Ducasse and his Alain Ducasse Formation (school) to concoct space recipes. "Being able to grow plants is fine, but they have to be prepared before eating, so the next challenge is to cook a variety of good food," said Lasseur. "We have teamed up with Alain Ducasse Formation to define a number of recipes which can be created with few raw ingredients that we may be able to produce on Mars, and with a limited number of cooking tools." Apparently another French company is designing the utensils for Mars, according to Lasseur -- Alain, this is the ultimate product line, don't you think? Just imagine the product placement alone, were Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger filming Total Recall now instead of back in 1990. Then again, there's a Mars movie every couple of years or so take the Total Recall advice dished out to Arnie: "Get your ass to Mars!... [rewind] Get your ass to Mars!... [rewind] Get your ass to Mars!..." Technorati Tags: chefs food restaurants cooking branding European Space Agency space travel --> back to superchefblog