It’s burrito month! In the latest episode of Cooking the Books, co-host Fran Wilde and I interview John Scalzi — and talk with him about writing during tough times, the importance of lawn care equipment, and burritos, bacon, and pie.

And we also have a giveaway of a SFWA cookbook and a copy of Robots vs Fairy, in which he has an story: enter below!

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It’s all for Cooking the Books this month, both here and at the extension kitchen over at The Booksmugglers! (check out John’s Booksmugglers Bonus answers!).

This month’s Cooking the Books Podcast, #035: Schadenfreude Burrito – Cooking the Books with John Scalzi contains:

• Bacon
• A lot of bacon. Bacon is always there for you.
• A shout out to this excellent essay by Kayla Whaley (@punkinonwheels on twitter): “The Difference a Meal Makes: On Losing the Ability to Eat Solid Food”
• The true meaning of Schadenfreude Pie
• The many foodways of the JoCo Cruise
• That time Scalzi’s phone started playing “Rock You Like a Hurricane” all on its own.
• HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE OPINIONS ABOUT POTATOES
• And much more.

Ready? Subscribe to the Podcast here! Or on iTunes! Or click play below:
(and consider supporting us on Patreon!)

Visit additional Cooking the Books content over on the The Booksmugglers!

(thanks as always to our friend Paul Weimer, who helps out with the kitchen cleaning–this time it was lots of sugar sticking to everything!)

Podcast #035: Schadenfreude Burrito – Cooking the Books with John Scalzi

John has obligingly shared with us his recipe for Schadenfreude Pie, discussed during the podcast!

“Let’s face it, schadenfreude is a dark emotion. It deserves a dark pie. Here are your ingredients.”

1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks
3 large eggs (I used brown eggs in keeping with the spirit of things, but white eggs are fine)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 splash Kahlua or other coffee liqueur
1 graham cracker pie crust (9 or 10 inches). Choose regular or chocolate graham cracker crust according to taste.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit). Melt butter in largish mixing bowl; add in corn syrup, molasses, brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix well. Melt chocolate; fold into existing mixture. Add eggs and Kahlua; mix vigorously until mix has an even consistency. Pour into pie crust (depending on size of crust you may have a little filling mix left over).
Shove into oven, center of middle rack, and bake for about 45 minutes. At 45 minutes, poke pie with butter knife. If butter knife comes out clean, your pie is done; otherwise give it about another five minutes.
Once you take the pie out of the oven, let it set at least 20 minutes before you dig in. It’s really good when still warm, however.
Serving recommendations: small slices (this is an awesomely rich pie) and an ice cold glass of milk to go with it.

John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you’re reading this, makes perfect sense. He’s best known for writing science fiction, including the New York Times bestseller “Redshirts,” which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word “Whatever” into Google. No, seriously, try it. You can find him on twitter @scalzi, and elsewhere.

Cooking the Books is a mostly-monthly podcast hosted by Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard.

Check out our archives.

Fran and I sat down with Brooke Bolander, the author of many fine and searing short stories, and the recently released The Only Harmless Great Thing (from Tor.com publishing), a book of radiation poisoning, elephants, Coney Island and two great injustices…

Yes it’s a new Cooking the Books episode! (check out the Booksmugglers exclusive content right here, with bonus answers from Brooke).

Ready? Subscribe to the Podcast here! Or on iTunes! Or click play below:
(and consider supporting us on Patreon!)

Visit additional Cooking the Books content over on the The Booksmugglers!

(thanks as always to our friend Paul Weimer, who helps out with the kitchen cleaning–this time it was lots of cocktail testing!)

Podcast #034: Of Mangoes and Radium – Cooking the Books with Brooke Bolander

And here’s Bo’s recipe:

COCKTAIL RECIPE: TOPSY’S ADIEU 

Ingredients: 

• 1 1/2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz Green Chartreuse
• 3/4 oz Saler’s Apertif
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1 teaspoon ginger-lime curd (recipe below)
• 1 egg white
• 1 teaspoon simple syrup/rich syrup

Mix all the ingredients in a shaker and dry shake (without ice) vigorously until combined. Add ice and shake some more until chilled. Strain into a coupe glass and enjoy!

Lime-ginger curd:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup ginger juice
• 4 tablespoons of butter, unsalted

Whisk the eggs and sugar together in a saucepan until combined. Add the lime juice and ginger juice and stir until they’re combined as well.

Heat over medium heat, whisking constantly (if you don’t, the eggs in the mixture will cook and you’ll have some super-funky dessert scramble) until the mixture thickens to a custardy consistency.

Trust me, it is way, way simpler than it sounds. Custard is the easiest thing in the world to make, so long as you don’t stop whisking.

Remove from heat and whisk in the butter.

Pass through a fine mesh strainer; you’re probably gonna have a bit of cooked egg white in there no matter what you do and this will take care of that.

Transfer to a jar and let cool before using in the cocktail or just eating by the spoonful; this is a no-judgment zone.

Even if you’re not a drinker, you’re probably gonna enjoy this stuff if you in any way dig tart sugary things.

Brooke Bolander writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy or general all-around weirdness. She attended the University of Leicester 2004-2007 studying History and Archaeology and is an alum of the 2011 Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UCSD. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Uncanny, Tor.com, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards, much to her unending bafflement. She can be reached at her website (brookebolander.com) or on Twitter @BBolander.

Cooking the Books is a mostly-monthly podcast hosted by Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard.

Check out our archives.

Our fabulous friend Malka Older found time between busy moments at BEA to talk with co-host Fran Wilde and me about her relief work in Japan after Fukushima, writing the data-driven, sf stunners Infomocracy and Null States (out soon from Tor.Com Publishing!) and telling us what foods go away first in an infomocracy universe. It’s all  for Cooking the Books this month, both here and at the extension kitchen over at The Booksmugglers! (check out Malka’s Booksmugglers Bonus answers!).

Haven’t read Infomocracy yet? Now’s the time — so you can get caught up for Null States! (and read Malka’s earlier Book Bite over here too)

This month’s Cooking the Books Podcast, #031:  Lines of Supply – Cooking the Books with Malka Older contains:

• One half dash, procrastination
• Three heaping spoonfuls of prognostication
• A possible pigeon
• A handful of social programming
• A touch of poetry
• Only the best picadillo

Ready? Subscribe to the Podcast here! Or on iTunes! Or click play below:
(and consider supporting us on Patreon, hmm?)

(thanks as always to our friend Paul Weimer who helps clean up the CtB kitchen after we destroy it…)

Podcast #031: Lines of Supply – Cooking the Books with Malka Older

Recipe: Picadillo

• Ingredients:
• ground beef,
• onion,
• pepper (any kind),
• garlic,
• cumin,
• oregano,
• tomato sauce,
• raisins,
• olives,
• olive oil

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate. Her writing can be found at Leveler, Tor.com, Bengal Lights, Sundog Lit, Capricious, Reservoir, Inkscrawl, Rogue Agent, in the poetry anthology My Cruel Invention, and in Chasing Misery, an anthology of writing by female aid workers. Her science fiction political thriller Infomocracy is the first full-length novel from Tor.com, and the sequel Null States will be published in 2017.

She was nominated for the 2016 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011.  You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and at malkaolder.wordpress.com.

You might have missed the announcement on this, but I’m now Fran Wilde‘s co-host for Cooking the Books, the podcast about SF and food. This month we sat down with Ruthanna Emrys, the author of the newly released Winter Tide from Tor.com Publishing, a novel about re-imagined Deep Ones.

Read excerpts at tor.com| Buy at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Indiebound

We talk about how Ruthanna uses food to evoke memory in her book. What we didn’t realize is that we would also be talking about revising the Lovecraftian recipe, and exploring monster digestion.

This podcast contains so much salt. Also a heads up about Ruthanna’s book party with her blog co-host Anne M. Pillsworth at Wiscon in a few weeks! Are you going? Pick up a Honeyed Salt Cake for us. Or try the recipe yourself, below…

This month’s Cooking the Books Podcast, #030: A Taste of Salt – Cooking the Books with Ruthanna Emrys contains:

• Deep Ones comfort food
• What one would feed H.P. Lovecraft (a Book Smugglers question!)
• Truffle salt, fleur-de-sel harvested from marshes, smoked salt…
• CSA joys
• Avocados
• Holiday Fish Stew
• Did We Mention Ruthanna’s Book Party at WISCON
• A mention of “The Litany of Earth”, the short story that started it all.
• Snarky aliens

Ready? Subscribe to the Podcast here! Or on iTunes! Or click play below.
(and consider supporting us on Patreon please?)

And visit additional Ruthanna Emrys content over on the The Booksmugglers!

Podcast #030: A Taste of Salt – Cooking the Books with Ruthanna Emrys

Direct MP3 Link

Recipe: Honeyed Saltcakes

(Recipe by Nora Temkin)
Makes: 21 cookies

Ingredients:

• ¼ C sugar
• 1.5C + 1T flour
• 1.5T fine-ground salt (People of the air who think there’s such a thing as “too much salt” may want to make this 1.5 teaspoons.)
• ½ C honey
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 egg
• ½ t baking soda
• Additional honey + course ground fleur de sel for glaze, to taste

To Cook:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Cream butter, sugar, and honey until smooth.
Add egg and mix.
Combine remaining dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well.
Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a greased cookie sheet, leaving room for cakes to spread to about 2 inches wide.
Bake 9-12 minutes until lightly browned.
Remove from oven—immediately brush with warm honey and sprinkle with sea salt. Serve warm.

Ruthanna Emrys is the author of Winter Tide, the first book in the Innsmouth Legacy series. She is also co-blogger on Tor.com’s Lovecraft Reread, and writes short stories about religion and aliens and psycholinguistics. She lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, DC with her wife and their large, strange family. She makes home-made vanilla, obsesses about game design, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world. You can find her on Twitter, livejournal, her website, and at Tor.com.

Cooking the Books is a mostly-monthly podcast hosted
by Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard.

Check out our archives.