August 8, 2015

The Geeky Chef Cookbook: Real Live Recipes From Your Favorite Fantasy Foods

Book Blurb:

Geek out with recipes inspired by books, movies, television, and video games!
You’ve conquered comic con. You binge watch Star Wars regularly. Now, it’s time to get your geek on in the kitchen!
Cassandra Reeder loves to cook, and she’s a bona-fide mega-geek. Comic-lover, avid gamer, and sci-fi and fantasy lover, she started The Geeky Chef in 2008. She creates real-life recipes for all the delicious foods you’ve seen in your favorite sci-fi and fantasy movies, TV shows, and video games. From Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games to Doctor Who, the Legend of Zelda and the World of Warcraft, this book features over 60 recipes and photos that you can re-create right in your own home for the geek in your life. Finally learn to create Butterbeer and Pumpkin Pasties from Harry Potter. Indulge in the Lemon Cakes from Game of Thrones. Sip from a bowl of Plomeek Soup from Star Trek and enjoy with Peeta’s Cheesy Bread from the Hunger Games right in your kitchen! Fantasy foods are fantasy no longer…

Ok, this was a fun cookbook. I loved how Cassandra Reeder was inspired to create the different recipes. As in: “I’ve seen a lot of Star Wars fans trying to get their Luke Skywalker on just by adding blue food coloring to their milk. That’s great, but I wanted to take it one step further…” And that is a common theme. Instead of creating a recipe with the typical influences, in this case she wanted to “make this beverage taste like it could actually be milk from a bizarre creature living in a galaxy far, far away.”

Some of the creations were from characters I was familiar with (The Legend of Zelda, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Babylon 5, more) and some I had to ask my kids about. The recipes were all unique in that there was a story behind each recipe. The way she incorporates ingredients in place for fictional ones fits, too. For example, her recipe for Yeto’s Superb Soup that was inspired by The Legend of Zelda uses salmon in place of ‘reekfish’ – a pungent red fleshed fish. She incorporates pumpkin and goat cheese, just like the game, and keeps it strikingly similar to the original gamers intention, although I’m not sure if the creator actually intended an actual recipe to be made from it.

A great read for fans, cooks, or fans that are cooks.