Dining with The Doctor: A Cookbook for Whovians

This year promises all sorts of Doctor Who goodness, what with the anticipation of the 50th anniversary episode in November. And about a month ago I started thinking about throwing a Doctor Who party for friends and family in an effort to celebrate all things, well, Whovian. In pondering food options, all I could think of were banana daiquiris, fish fingers and custard. Unfortunately, those three items don’t really make a dinner party particularly interesting. When searching Amazon.com, however, I came across Chris-Rachael Oseland’s recently published Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook.It sounded like just the thing.

Chris-Rachael Oseland is a geek and tech writer by day for The Austin Post, and a geek culinary blogger by night. Oseland, author at Kitchen Overlord, was reintroduced to Doctor Who during the David Tennant years by her best friend, Anne, who insisted that she go back and watch from the beginning of the reboot. Being a freelance writer, and having independently published a book of steampunk cocktails SteamDrunks, she used Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish this second fan-focused cookbook. Independent publishing seemed to be the best route for this particular cookbook, as it allowed the book to be published within a year–in time for the 50th anniversary celebration instead of multiple years of back and forth with a publishing company. Oseland’s books are printed on demand, she receives a higher percentage per book from CreateSpace, there is less worry of running out of stock or being able to afford a first run. She recommends it as a great service for independent authors.

Dining with The Doctor: The Unofficial Whovian Cookbook might be one of the most entertaining cookbooks a Whovian could imagine. The book is set up as a recipe per episode, recapping important plot points and relating the dish to each episode either by featured food, featured alien, or some other obvious method. Let me warn you that unless you are at least remotely interested in Doctor Who, this isn’t the cookbook for you. There are no earth-shattering recipes in search of a James Beard award, the photography is all done in-home, and while I might tweak some ingredients in the recipes(Q-tips as food garnish?) the book is so much fun that I rarely noticed the downsides. Oseland has taken a lot of time to minimize the number of major allergens (peanuts and shellfish) in her recipes while still providing a large variety of choices for vegetarian, vegan and low carb diets.

The cookbook retails for $20 in paperback on Amazonor $5.99 for the electronic Kindle version. While I was provided a review copy of this book, I would have easily bought this for myself without prompting.

Oseland has a busy year ahead with two new cookbooks planned for release. In May, before the gaming season erupts at GenCon, she is releasing Wood for Sheep: The Unauthorized Settlers Cookbook, featuring tasty menus designed to resemble the famous game board and sure to please any Catan fan. This fall she plans to release the unofficial cookbook to the Walking Dead series, promising deliciously gory treats for the die hard fan.

Her blog Kitchen Overlord, also features an illustrated series of geeky recipes called Edible Art. Working closely with artist Tom Gordon, she takes favorite fan foods and inspires visually delicious versions of the original recipes. She has so far featured dishes from Firefly, Once Upon a Time, Lost, and other massively popular sci-fi shows.

Oseland promises to continue her Doctor Who recipes, and expects to publish a second episode based cookbook for the reboots 10th anniversary in 2015.

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