Arguably the franchise that sold the OG Sony PlayStation all those years ago, we’ve seen Tomb Raider’s lead character go through several evolutions, from an angular polygon on your TV, to taking Alicia Vikander-shaped flesh on the big screen.
If you’re still eager for more Lara Croft, you can eat like she does – and we don’t mean by running over a digital hamburger icon either – she’s gone the whole way from a console disc to a movie projector to online content to paper and ink. Due for release on October 26th, as part of this year’s Tomb Raider 25th anniversary celebrations, Tomb Raider: Official Cookbook and Travel Guide features 40 recipes from locations around the world our hero’s featured in.
Written by Tara Theoharis who put together The Minecrafter’s Cookbook, the recipe book will cover staples from Tomb Raider game and movie locations such as lomo saltado (stir fried beef) from Peru, vada pav (the famous Indian ‘potato burger’) and the right on trend okonomiyaki – a savory Japanese pancake, cooked with different meat and veggie additions depending on which region of Japan it’s from – that’s starting to appear more and more in the US right now.
However, the signature recipe is somewhat more traditional – programmers Core Design released a bio of Lara in the original game in 1996 that reckoned her favorite meal was the simple classic British beans on toast. Theoharis may have come up with the ultimate version of the comfort food, using Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder and apple cider vinegar in her recipe. The 32-bit Lara Croft is still probably the definitive icon of the series and continues to cross media – online gaming platform Foxy Bingo has a dedicated Tomb Raider game that uses the old version of Lara Croft rather than the rebooted character. It’s this cross promotional versatility that has enabled Lara Croft and the wider series to become so mainstream, and gain a fanatical following over the years. And yes, even spawning its own cookbook, crossing multiple markets in the process due to its global appeal.
Tomb Raider isn’t the first video game to have its own cookbook either – Destiny has one, the aforementioned Minecraft recipe book was authored by the same author (also known as ‘The Geeky Hostess’), and the Pokémon cookbook is great fun, although some of the ingredients in that one may be hard to find unless you have a good Japanese supermarket nearby. What sets Tomb Raider: Official Cookbook and Travel Guide apart is the game, and movies’ real world settings. See how your lomo saltado or ceviche stacks up against your local Peruvian restaurant’s version. It might be a trek to get to Tonga, but we can all get the watermelon, pineapple and coconut milk to make the Polynesian specialty drink otai.
The travel guide portion of the book offers background and cultural history on the locations the recipes hail from, giving context to why these locations were chosen for the games and movies. A slight word of warning though, if we’ve ever had aspirations of having a figure like Lara Croft, it may be best to go easy on the Nepalese momos. Although that may not be so easy to do in practice…
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