Halo: The Official Cookbook is an in-universe cookbook written by a new character to the series, Arturo Bustamante. His previous job took him across many of the different worlds featured in the Halo Universe, but Arturo himself only knows as much about Master Chief and the Halo Rings as what he’s seen on the news. Arturo was once a corporate manager for Yaka Frutas, an intergalactic fruit company in the Halo Universe. He handled a lot of contracts and other soul-sucking corporate work, but it sent him all across the universe to different colonies, outposts, and cities.
In his retirement, Arturo wrote a cookbook because he wanted to share his experience interacting with all of the people that work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep everyone supported and fed across the galaxy. Traveling on UNSC vessels (strictly on business), visiting Reach before the Fall, exploring the side streets of New Mombasa, Arturo’s hope and my hope as well is to bring more to the Halo Universe and expand on an already rich lore with rich food. He decided to write this cookbook to help those without the connections to zoom around space experience some of the cuisine and culture that he got to experience during his job.
Publication Date: August 16, 2022
Publisher: Insight Editions
Game Publisher: 343 Studios/ Microsoft
Number of Pages: 192
Number of Recipes: 71
Where to buy: Your Favorite Local Book Store, Amazon, Insight Editions
My Contributions: Recipe Selection & Development, Photography*, and Additional Text Writing
*A few of the photos on the cover were done by an another studio. All photography within the book were taken by me.
My Process
There is so much content in the Halo Universe. As with every project, I take a pretty deep dive into the lore of the series; playing the games, looking through wikis, videos of people playing the game, and reaching out to the dev team if there are any specific items or locations that we should include. After I have all this information collected, I decide how things are going to be organized. Do we want a normal cookbook layout, with apps first and then soups, etc, or do we want to focus on particular locations/ characters.
For Halo, the locations were the obvious choice because many of these spots would have menus to work off of. I made sure to include any menu items or details from the game and then do a little bit of filling in to make sure each location had a reasonable amount of items made. World Cuisine, for example, has a menu on their stalls in Halo: Reach. Fronk’s is based on the storefront in the Halo 3 Longshore map which conveniently displays a menu that actually rotates with the calendar. On the other hand, Jim Dandy has a minor description in Halo: Contact Harvest and I worked off that to come up with a menu for that locale. This is the part of the process I love. I, in a small way, get to help expand the lore of game worlds and that is kinda neat. So many people play these games, but vending machines and menus and other nods to the food can be lost among the details of the environment. I just love stopping in the middle of a game and looking at all the extra care the artists put into fully building out the world for you to play in, and it’s thanks to these details that we can learn so much about the food that exists in the game universe.
With the menus for each location decided, I began the heavy lifting of developing each recipe. A lot of the food in this book is comfort food. I felt like Arturo would want to highlight recipes that brought joy and comfort in the coldness that is space travel. Several of these recipes are actually ones that my mom made for me growing up. It was really nice to put a bit of my childhood on the plate. She really helped out by sharing her recipes and allowed me to work with them for this project. This book does have a decent amount of fried foods because of the fast food chains that we were calling out. After I was done with this project, I banned fried foods from the house for like 3 months.
Are there Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, etc recipes in the book?
Yes, each recipe notes any dietary notes that might apply to those items. There is also a note about adjusting the recipes in the book to adapt them to your dietary needs. As I always say, feel free to adapt recipes to make them work for you.
My Favorite Recipes
There are a lot of recipes I really like from this book. The Salmon Burger (pg 27) is based on a recipe that Jeff and I have made for several years now. We both really enjoy salmon and were playing around with different ways of serving it. One week, we were feeling like burgers and I decided to try using salmon instead of ground meat. Boy was I surprised! I have been saving this recipe in my pocket for a while. I’m so happy I was finally able to share it.
My guilty pleasure food has always been hot dogs. I mean, I grew up in Chicago, they are local staple! I was so excited when I saw the list of food served on the UNSC ships and they included a Hot Dog Dinner (pg 35). This isn’t a Chicago style hot dog, but I was really inspired by the hot dogs served in Denmark, delish fried onions and remoulade. It is so good!
Two big classics I had growing up constantly were Rosół (pg 121) and Cachapas (pg 165). These were dishes I was always excited to have. The cachapas recipe is one of my mother’s and she was really excited to hear that I was putting a Venezulean recipe in a book. Rosół is Polish style chicken noodle soup. My dad’s side of the family is Polish and there are many recipes, but unfortunately, we never got the written recipes from my grandparents. A lot of their cooking style was just throw things in and it will all work out. I had to make this one based on memory from what I’ve had and I’m really happy to have included it.
Finally, the Barbacoa Tacos (pg 29) and Halo-Halo (pg 109) are ones that I’ve made several times since finishing the project. The barbacoa recipe uses lamb and I love it. Just writing about it now I might run out and grab the ingredients to make some for this weekend! Halo-Halo is a wonderful Filipino dessert. The first time I had one, I knew I needed to figure out how to make this for myself. This project was the perfect option, and the name of the dish was too good to pass up for this project. I might go make a batch of ube ice cream right now!
Beginners: Where to Start?
As with all of my projects, this book has a huge variety of recipes with a wide variety of difficulty among them.. If you are looking for a place to start, here are a few wonderful recipes to try.
Tallarines Verdes (pg 125) is the recipe I would recommend to someone who is just starting in the kitchen. It is a wonderful Peruvian spin on a pesto pasta. A lot of the heavy lifting is done by a blender and it makes a decent amount of leftovers! It is super easy to put together. If you’d like to take a smaller step, Groob (pg 175) is another great option. Groob is a delicious smoothie, which again the blender does a lot of the work. As you make this, you can also slowly start adding fruit or vegetables to make it your own.
Next I would dive into either the Tuna Gyros (pg 67), Moa Caesar Salad (pg 89), or Smörgås (pg 163). Each of these have several components to bring it all together. Many of the components can be done ahead of time before the final dish is put together. All of these recipes will be teaching you a new skill and helping you improve in the kitchen in some way.
Finally, I know a lot of people are always hoping to level up their baking game. The Chocolate Chip Scones (pg 49) and Cheese Danish (pg 51) are great starting points. I’ve kept these recipes very beginner friendly, so do not worry you aren’t making your own puff pastry.
Thank You
First, a really big thank you to both Insight Editions and 343 Industries for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. Thank you to those I worked with directly on this project. I think we truly made a wonderful cookbook together.
Thank you to my husband, Jeff, for all the help he provides with these projects. He really helped develop the voice of Arturo Bustamante. He also was an honest critic when it came to the recipes and helped me decide if they were good enough to make it in the book. Without him, these cookbooks wouldn’t be as amazing as they are. Kanji (my corgi) also deserves a shout out. During the whole process, he was keeping an eye on me in the kitchen as I worked. It is nice to have his little fluffy butt in the kitchen supervising. Sometimes he gets a little piece of carrot to snack on as a reward.
Thank you to my agent, Kate McKean. You make my life so much easier with each of these projects and I’m happy for all the work you do! Without you, I would be getting confused reading all the contract legal speak.
Thank you to everyone who has been cheering me on as I’ve been working on all these projects. I’m grateful that my family is always so excited to see what I’m cooking up, my friends for dealing with the extra leftovers I demand they take off my hands, and for everyone who cooks any of the recipes I have written. It really means a lot to me and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Review and Coverage
Paul Semel – Exclusive Interview: “Halo: The Official Cookbook” Writer Victoria Rosenthal
Errata
Between the quick timelines and large amount of writing and content, errors in the cookbooks can sneak through to print. I’ve started compiling a list for those that have been pointed out to me so far. If you find any other errors in any book, please feel free to reach out to me so they can be added to these lists and adjusted in future prints.
Salt – I always use kosher salt when cooking. If you are using table salt make sure to use 3/4 teaspoon of table salt in place of 1 teaspoon of kosher salt.
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