Jurassic Park
While the initial intention was to time this Jurassic Park menu to the release of the sixth (and dear god we hope) final movie in the Jurassic Park/World franchise, I’ve also realized that I’m slowly making my way through the Steven Spielberg “top five”. If you have to ask what the others are, read my previous and upcoming posts. Or read this article. But no arguing.
Released in 1993, Jurassic Park is actually based on a book (you know, those box shaped things filled with paper sheets covered in writing) by celebrated sci fi author Michael Crichton. Described by the New York Times as “a true movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring sights never before seen on the screen”, the film took huge steps forward with regard to animatronics (the T-Rex weighed about 12,000lbs and would malfunction/come alive in the rain eep) and cgi. But let’s not stop with the visuals– although SOME critics felt that the character development needed work, I always felt that the priority was, as it should have been, the “science”.
For those who might not have seen the OG Jurassic Park, the plot follows cranky paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his gf Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), who are persuaded by bajillionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to vet his almost opened theme park featuring real life cloned dinosaurs. They are joined by Hammond’s grandchildren, a bloodsucking lawyer, and the sexy mathmetician Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum), who together all end up fleeing from the dinosaurs that (of course) escape their habitats and do what they do best at the top of the food chain.
I won’t go into more detail about the plot here, because really, you should have seen this movie by now. What I will say is that Jurassic Park always leaves me with a very palpable feeling of humility, and frustration with the human race’s overwhelming arrogance which is fundamentally at odds with nature. If you want to know what I mean, just listen to any of Jeff Goldblum/Dr. Malcom’s eloquent and uniquely cadenced speeches. It’s worth noting that, like Indiana Jones with archaeology, Jurassic Park generated so much interest in the science and history of dinosaurs that the study of paleontology had a record increase in students in the year of its premiere. Let’s hope some of those students are out in the world helping mitigate human egotism and NOT working for Elon Musk.
Ok, must go faster, must go faster. The Food: I’ve made a menu that features actual foods from the movie (human AND dinosaur foods), with a few creative twists. It’s a big menu for a big movie, so give yourself a little time– to those of you who ask, “Anna, how’d you do this?”, my response is (in a dramatic whisper):
Hold on to your butts!
The Movie
The Menu
Based on a quintessential amber colored tiki cocktail called the Jungle Bird (get it? cause of the similarities between dinosaurs and birds?), this cocktail also features syringes filled with dark aged rum. Because BINGO: Dino DNA! Drink enough and your genetic makeup might be irreversibly altered... Mix up all of your ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Pour over ice of your preferred shape (I prefer round like Hammond's amber cane topper), garnish with a few pineapple spikes, the aforementioned rum filled syringes, and keep your eyes out for impact tremors. Life will not be contained! Life finds a way! Unless... you hard boil it. But that's preferable to having an actual raptor pop out, amiright? Begin with your not yet hatched baby dinosaurs-- bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil, and add eggs. Cook for 10 minutes and drain, running the eggs (shells still on!) under cold water. Once cooled to room temp, roll lightly on a hard surface until small cracks appear, but not enough for bits of the shell to fall off. Add to a ziploc together with your soy sauce and seal, turning to coat. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to overnight. When ready, gather your other ingredients: Remove the eggs from the soy sauce marinade and peel away the shells-- the result of the soaking process should be veiny brown lines where the soy sauce "dyed" the egg whites. Using a sharp knife, cut into the top of the egg at a zig zag-- remove the egg tops and and the hardened egg yolks with a small spoon. Add the yolks to a small blender together with the ingredients 3 through 7, pureeing until smooth (you can add a LITTLE splash of water to help the texture along). Pipe or spoon your dinosaur-y green filling back into your hollowed out egg whites. Top with a drizzle of chili crunch for a firey kick and bone crackly texture and serve on a plate of green stuff. So yummy you'll need two for yourself. Just don't let them sit for too long OR ELSE. One of the first real food scenes in the movie (excluding human followed by cow a la raptor) features Jurassic Park's renowned Chef Alejandro's signature dish-- Chilean Sea Bass. But do you know how much this stuff is per lb? And do you know how much super high quality free range steak we're making later? A lot, that's how much. So I decided to scale this larger dish down to littlesaurus size-- makes for a lovely appetizer plate. If, however, your happen to be a veggiesaurus like Lex, feel free to spare no expense and multiply the below recipe by a bunch. Using a mandolin or a spiralizer (check out my post for Ferris Bueller's Day Off for a product recommendation!), get your sweet potato to look like this: The appropriate blade size for the mandolin is 3mm, fyi. Toss your potato match sticks with corn starch and allow to sit for a moment while you heat up your oil in a medium skillet. When the oil pops with a drop of water, your ready to fry your potatoes! Shake off excess cornstarch and toss your potatoes into the hot oil in batches, keeping the pieces as separated as possible to prevent sticking. Drain on a paper towel and sprinkle immediately with salt. Next, pat your fish filet dry and assemble the rest of your ingredients. In the same skillet (sans old potato oil), heat 1 tbsp of new oil over medium high heat. Add your fish skin down to the pan, cooking for roughly five minutes to allow the skin to crips up. Flip, and cook for another 5 minutes or so until the fish is cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside in a warm place. Returning to your skillet, add butter and shallot and reduce heat to low. Caramelized for roughly 7 minutes until the shallots are softened, then add your wine and broth. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the sauce is reduced by half-- mix in minced parsley and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Now, time for assembly-- in small appetizer plates (or one bigger plate if you prefer), spoon a layer of white wine butter sauce. Add a few green bean slivers at a spiky angle, followed by a heft chunk of Chilean sea bass. Top with some fried sweet potatoes for additional crunch and voila! Alessandro would approve. Despite the lack of purely superflous cherry tomatoes. If you have some extra time, I highly recommend soaking your fish in a salted water for 30 minutes or so. Helps mitigate some of the fishiness you might taste from store bought fish. Well, a couldn't find goat, so I made some gargantuan Costa Rican coffee-rubbed ribeye steaks with the bones frenched for easy pick up and utensil-free gnawing. Remember how I said this part of the meal would be pricey? Well, it will be WORTH IT! Don't get cheap on me Dodgson. For those brachiosaurus types out there, I've accompanied this hunk of medium rare beef with a dinosaur kale and gigante bean salad. It's way simpler to figure out than a Unix system, and hearty enough for an entree if you're inclined to avoid raptor food. Guys, did I say this steak was good? Because it might be the best cow I've ever eaten. And it's mostly due to the Costa Rican inspired coffee spice rub: Pulse the coffee and fennel seed in a spice grinder until fine. Mix with the rest of your seasonings and set aside. Unwrap your steaks and cut away the meat at the angled botton of the bone. This is what makes your steak a mini-tomahawk or cowboy steak-- you're creating a little handle! Continue to trim meat and fat away from the bone until your handle is clean. VERY IMPORTANT: Don't throw away your meat trimmings (SEE NOTE)! Rub a little more that 3/4 of the spice mix into the meat (SEE NOTE AGAIN), including the sides. Set the steak aside, uncoverd, for another 35-40 minutes, allowing it to come to room temperature and the rub to crust on the outside of the steak. While your steak is hanging out, assemble your super simple side salad. This photo was taken BEFORE I slivered the kale because, whoops, editorial error. Whisk your olive oil, honey, cumin, and lime juice until emulsified, seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. Toss with slivered kale and beans, rubbing the dressing into the kale a bit with your fingers to help it soften. Set aside to further marinate at room temperature while you preheat your oven to 450. When it's time to return to your steak, heat vegetable oil in a large oven proof skillet on high. add steaks to the pan, reducing heat to medium high. Sear, undisturbed, for 5 minutes. Flip the steaks and finish off in the preheated oven, for another 4 minutes (internal temp should be at about 115 for medium rare)-- steaks will have developed a crispy brown spicy crust! Remove from the pan and tent with aluminum foil, allowing the meat to rest for 10 minutes. Using a sharp knife, slice thickly from the end opposite the bone handle. Seriously, look at that: Serve with dinosaur kale and gigante bean salad for them extra nutrients and dinosaur vibes. If you only have access to dried gigante beans, no worries! You just soak in water for 6-8 hours/overnight (or quick soak them), and then add to a small pot with chicken broth, a bay leave, and whatever else you wanna throw in (old carrots, celery stems, herbs, anything savory). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover-- simmer like that for about 40 minutes, or until softened to the degree you prefer. AND, regarding those leftover pieces of meat + spice rub: the day after you make this Jurassic Park meal, I highly recommend slicing your steak bits up, tossing them in the remaining spices, and making steak tacos with pickled onions and guac. Yeah, yeah, everyone probably expected Barbasol whipped cream on a cherry pie or that god damn green jell-o. But instead I paid homage to that one scene where John Hammond passionately (see what I did there?) talks about his first flea circus over a big tub of melty ice cream. It's sad and sweet and looks delicious. Plus, bonus points for the fun activity of uncovering shortbread fossils under a layer of shortbread biscuit (or cookie for us non-Brits) dust. Note: since I forgot to store my ice cream maker bowl in the fridge, I figured this was as good a time as any to try a no churn ice cream recipe. If you're curious about the difference, see more deets here. The concept gets a bad rep, which I think is accurate in some cases-- but when it comes to this recipe, the acid of the passionfruit cuts through the sweetness of the condensed milk in a way that proves cheating the natural order of things sometimes pays off. Start by whipping up your cream with a stand or hand mixer in a medium bowl. You should end up with some stiff peaks. Add your salt and some powdered ginger (as Jurassic Park's own Chef Alejandro would wish it) to your condensed milk. Fold one third of the whipped cream into the condensed milk mixture to lighten it a bit, then fold the lightened milk back into the fresh whipped cream-- very gently with a rubber spatula-- until blended. You don't want to be heavy handed with this, or your ice cream will be a creamy ice cube. Pour into a pie tin or small metal loaf pan and smooth. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and freeze for about two hours. After the first round of freezing, your ice cream should be about the consistency of soft serve. At this point you can add the passionfruit and lightly stir until incorporated. Continue to freeze, covered, until solid and scoopable, for at least four hours. Now for your biscuits! I feel British already... Using the same stand/hand mixer, beat 5 tbsps of butter and vanilla on high until light and fluffy. Add confectioners sugar and beat on medium speed until mixed. Scrape the sides of the bowl down, and add flour-- continue to beat on low, scraping as you go, until fulled combined. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into roughly 1/2 inch thick slices (they don't have to be perfectly round, we're going for a natural, stoney look). Using artistic skill (or in my case, very cheap dinosaur toys) cut/press whatever fossil shapes you choose into your cookies. It's all good if some of the impressions aren't perfect here either-- you're going to crumble 3 or 4 of the least attractive cookies into dust. FUN. Place cookies, spaced at least an inch apart, onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire sheet to cool, and pick out your least desirable ones-- these you're going to CRUSH. In a small skillet, melt remaining 2 tbsp of butter and add the brown sugar, strring until melted. Add your cookie dust and stir until fully coated in butter. Continue to stir until cookie dust is golden brown and toasty-- set aside to cool. When ready to stir, spoon ice cream into cups and stick a fossil cookie in. Spoon a hefty portion of cookie crumble over the fossil cookie and hey presto-- an interactive Jurassic Park themed treat that even cranky Dr. Grant might even appreciate. Probably not, but at least Dr. Sattler would think mmm... that's good.
Dino DNA
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Hard Boiled Raptor Eggs
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Chilean Sea Bass (I spared some expense)
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Coffee Rubbed Cow with Dinosaur Kale and Gigante Beans
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Passionfruit Ice Cream w/Fossil Biscuits
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On a cutting board, shape the dough into a cylindar a little over 4 inches long. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until more firm, between 30 minutes and an hour. While you wait, preheat your oven to 350F. 
Epilogue
Long ago when I was a youth (ie the Jurassic Period), I had fun creative friends who made really cool shit and I wanted to too. So I started a backyard film project with said friends and we would all make short films themed to movies we’d screen. Here is one I made for Jurassic Park. It is ridiculous. But my friends and I, like Dr. Ian Malcom, can sometimes suffer from a deplorable excess of personality.
For more menus, check out my movie directory here!