THE COOKBOOK TEST #0021: MINECRAFT: GATHER, COOK, EAT!
INSTALLMENT #0021 (PAID) PROLOGUE / HOW AND WHY TO PLAY MINECRAFT / WHAT’S FOOD GOT TO DO, GOT TO DO WITH IT? / THE CAKE / FARMLAND SMÖRGÅSTÅRTA
A quick prologue:
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Dear Subscribers,
This week we're blocking out some time to dig deep for ... ugh... no... can't do it. The main theme is Minecraft. The other theme is "no more puns."
Because I am a degenerate gamer I have, of course, logged several dozen hours in the world of Minecraft, and so I'm at least passingly familiar with its conventions. The game is interesting because its emphasis on resource extracting, crafting, and customization means that it's less a conventional game than it is a Lego-like building block simulation where imagination reigns. (You would be hard pressed to discover this through the billions of hours of Minecraft videos and streams out there, which are monomaniacally obsessed with overpowered mods and player versus player tomfoolery that recalls the heyday of Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine.)
My own preferred way to enjoy the world of Minecraft is as follows:
Establish a safe base for resting and mining.
Extract piles of sand and coal in order to make glass panels and blocks in the furnace.
Locate sheep.
Shear sheep.
Locate more sheep.
Shear sheep again.
Repeat ad infinitum; dye wool a rainbow of colors.
Create a sprawling, multihued mansion consisting of colorful wool blocks and glass greenhouses.
Lose interest in the game entirely.
Other people get sucked into the very loosely constructed story of the game (which involves eventually going to a Nether dimension and whacking a gigantic bat or something), or building, hiding, finding and mischievously destroying bases belonging to other players.
Most of this focused activity, I think, misses the actual point of the game, which is that Minecraft presents you with an explorable universe that is so vast and so deep that you can and probably will get hopelessly lost in it. There are moments of real wonder when you cross the peak of a mountain and see a village sprawling across a tropical shore, or descend into a cavern and discover sheets of liquid fire descending from the rocks like waterfalls.
And there are moments of real boredom as you excavate the equivalent of megatons of rock in search of scarce iron, gold, or diamonds. Somehow the latter moments enhance the former - interesting stuff is precious and irregularly distributed through the game, which makes its discovery feel legitimately exciting.
The soundtrack follows much the same format: sometimes it's silent, sometimes it's abstract IDM-informed electronic plinking, and every once in a while it swells into something resembling a romantic overture before disintegrating again into the deep background. It's neat.
I think the verdict is out, forever, on whether Minecraft is sort of stupid, or truly brilliant, or a profound mix of both. I do feel comfortable saying that MINECRAFT: GATHER, COOK, EAT! OFFICIAL COOKBOOK is extremely silly and might crack the top 100 list of History's Most Inessential Cookbooks. But my five-year-old daughter was legitimately very excited to see it and cook from it, so that counts for something. How much? Let's find out.
at your service,
James
MINECRAFT: GATHER, COOK, EAT! OFFICIAL COOKBOOK
BY TARA THEOHARIS
INSIGHT EDITIONS | 2023 | $28
There are two major problems with the concept of Minecraft: Gather, Cook, Eat! The first is that while you certainly can cook stuff in Minecraft, you really don’t have to, at least not very seriously. You can quite easily subsist on carrots, beets, roasted meat, and the occasional loaf of bread. If you want to use Suspicious Stew to boost various attributes, you certainly can; if you want to make pumpkin pie or a cake, you’re welcome to do so. You don’t have to, it’s sort of a hassle, and it’s generally irrelevant to actually playing the game.
The second major problem with Minecraft: Gather, Cook, Eat! is how, for a book that is monomaniacally focused on Minecraft, so many of the recipes are tied to Minecraft with the most slender of threads. Recipes like kebabs and non-alcoholic “shooters” aren’t in the game, for example, and others are just loosely linked through the inclusion of a recipe ingredient (mushroom-topped burgers for example.) And while a few of the book's recipes lean into the look and feel of the game (like the Cake recipe I attempted), many don’t. What about a salmon-stuffed meat pie looks like the game’s trademark blocky pixel-driven feel? Or a brisket made using Satan’s curse upon cookery, that vile additive known as liquid smoke? Not much.
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