Do you like eating? Do you like the battle royale game Apex Legends? If it’s a firm ‘yes’ for both these questions then Apex Legends The Official Cookbook might be the book for you.
Written by Jordan Alsaqa and Tom Grimm, and published by Titan books (who also brought us another gaming/cooking book in the form of Minecraft: Gather, Cook, Eat! Official Cookbook), Apex Legends: The Official Cookbook contains 65 recipes inspired by the varied planets and Legends in the game.
Chapters contain recipes for different types of meals such as Breakfast, Apps and sides, Soups & stews and Entrées (main courses), Baked goods and Drinks. There are also chapters that include recipes for food that you might expect to find at eating establishments on different planets. You’ll find meat-based recipes from Okonkwo’s on Boreas, asian-inspired food from the Street Market, desserts from Indidi and chicken-based recipes in the chapter Chickenbique (the Apex Legends equivalent of KFC, whose adverts you’ll see pop up from time to time in-game).
The book itself comes as a hardback and inside is artwork of the landscapes and characters of Apex Legends as well as thoughtfully styled photographs of the actual dishes themselves. The only disappointing aspect of the book design we felt was the front cover on the version we were sent which just showed a stack of pancakes – nothing to signify the link to the game or the myriad of more unusual recipes that are to be found within.
Apex Legends: The Official Cookbook is written from the perspective of one of the Legends – Pathfinder. Despite being a robot and not being able to eat, he is quite the chef. The premise of the book is that Pathfinder has travelled around the planets collecting recipes, asking all of the other Legends for their favourites to compile the cookbook. Each recipe is introduced with a narrative by Pathfinder, which links the recipe to the game in the irreverent manner we expect from our favourite MRVN.
As you would expect from recipes compiled by characters from the Titanfall universe, these are not your everyday fare. We have some unusual combinations included, such as Nessie’s Easter Egg Salad Pizza, the use of exotic ingredients like Gibraltar’s Mahi-mahi (well, exotic for the UK, you can’t find the Mahi-mahi fish in Tesco), and some that don’t sound too appealing – anyone fancy a bowl of Wattson’s Eelhead Stew? Saying that, there are also many recipes that sound a bit more familiar like Newcastle’s Red Velvet Cake and Fuse’s Meat Pies.
Each recipe features a colour photograph (often taking up a full page), which is useful when replicating the dish, and the usual ingredients list and preparation (method). It also tells you the yield, cook time and difficulty based on the Apex Legends ranking system of bronze, silver and gold. On some recipes you are also given useful hints and tips in a section called ‘Artificial advice’. The recipes look pretty simple to follow and the instructions don’t skimp on detail, making them suitable for beginner and experienced cooks alike.
The recipes are very US-centric with measurements in cups and ounces and oven temperatures in ℉. There are conversion charts at the end of the book but things would be much simpler for the rest of the metric-using world if both types of measurement were given in the actual recipe. A similar issue comes with some of the ingredients that are quite specialised and simply can’t be found easily in UK shops such as turbinado or raw sugar, which pops up in recipes an awful lot, palm nut concentrate, beletete leaf and the aforementioned Mahi-mahi fillets. Some advice on alternative ingredients wouldn’t go amiss. Saying that, this only affected a handful of recipes.
Apex Legends: The Official Cookbook will appeal to adventurous cooks who like to try something new as it features some quite unusual dishes from around the world, including some that were unfamiliar to us; the Korean dish Dosirak and West African snacks kuli-kuli and Kokoro. In fact, there is a large selection of West African dishes, a cuisine that is unknown to many outside this part of the world, so it is great to see it so well represented here. A recipe that we were very familiar with and happy to see came in the form of a true breakfast of legends – the full English.
We’re not sure how big the middle of the Venn diagram is for fans of both cooking and Apex Legends, but the individuals that exist here will enjoy Apex Legends: The Official Cookbook. It is a hybrid of game art book, fan fiction and cookbook which contains a great selection of sweet and savoury foods, as well as drinks, from across the world.
It’s time to round up your squad and show them what a legend you are in the kitchen.
Huge thanks to Titan Books for providing us a review copy. You can pick up Apex Legends: The Official Cookbook for around £25.99 from Amazon.
