Eat Your Way through a Multiverse of Fantasy Faves with This Illustrated Cookbook

I’m back with another geeky cookbook review! This time, I am reviewing Cooking for Wizards, Warriors, and Dragons. Boasting a whopping 125 recipes inspired by an entire library worth of fantasy (and arguably a few sci-fi) books, Cooking for Wizards, Warriors, and Dragons was written by Thea James (a Hugo Award winner!), with recipes by Isabel Minunni and illustrated by Tim Foley.

Media Lab Books

We picked this book up at the bookstore based solely on the huge bibliography that it draws inspiration from. With so many recipes touching on so many different books and series, we couldn’t pass it up! Once we got home, we went through it from front to back and picked out a couple recipes to try, in part to get a sense of the book and in part because I knew I’d be writing this review. But let’s start with general impressions, first.

Obviously, the number of recipes is a draw. With 125 dishes spanning all your daily meals (including Second Breakfast), you’re almost certainly going to find something that is to your taste. Equally as exciting is the list of books the recipes draw inspiration from: there are the usual suspects like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, but there are also pleasant surprises like the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and the Daevabad Trilogy. The diversity of books translates into a diversity of recipes, so you have everything from fiteer to obe ata to tempt your taste buds. Here’s what we chose to try this first go:

• Overnight Oats with Pistachios (a breakfast from the Daevabad Trilogy)
• Beef and Turnip Stew (a dinner from the Kingkiller Chronicle)
• Dandelion’s Delight (a cocktail from The Witcher)
• Geralt’s Life-Saving Chicken Sando (a dinner from The Witcher)

The Beef and Turnip Stew is delicious.

I also really want to try Roasted Fish with Garlic Yams and Caramelized Pearl Onions (from the Broken Earth trilogy), but I couldn’t wrangle it in time for this review. Well, okay, there are a bunch of other recipes that I really want to try, but that’s a good sign!

All four of the recipes we did end up making turned out really good, though I had to make a couple adjustments for ingredients that I couldn’t or didn’t want to buy special. Despite my edits, I did try to stay generally true to the recipes, so that I could give a fair review. And generally, the recipes we tried were really tasty! The stew turned out especially good, hearty and rich and perfect for the cool weather we’re getting right now. Dandelion’s Delight and the overnight oats were also pretty good, and things that I will more than likely be making again in the future.

Okay, now for the part where I complain a little bit. While the food turned out delicious, some of the proportions are really weird and unbalanced. The stew, for example, calls for 2 pounds each of beef and turnips while the number of servings is apparently four?! That means each person is eating half a pound of meat and a half pound of turnips, plus all of the other ingredients, in one go. Absurd. We got eight hearty servings out of it. And, while it was tasty, next time around I’m planning on subbing out some turnips for more carrots and maybe some potatoes. It just needs a little more variety in each bite. Similarly, when we made the chicken “sando,” the amount of bourbon-braised onions the recipe made was way too much. The recipe could probably have been halved and worked out better.

Dandelion’s Delight lives up to its name.

One thing to note about this cookbook is that it does not have any photos of the food. Instead, it is beautifully illustrated with black-and-white scenes to match the recipe and novel-inspiration. I like the illustrations a lot, but I also miss the food photos. It’s nice to be able to take in a recipe at a glance, rather than having to inspect the ingredients list and/or instructions. Couldn’t we have both photos and illustrations?

In terms of what level cook you should be to manage the recipes, I don’t think this is a beginner cookbook. There are a lot of pretty involved recipes and some of them use really specialized ingredients or cookware. Also, there is the issue with proportions that I mentioned above; more experienced cooks will catch things like that beforehand and can make adjustments on the fly. But if you feel confident enough in your cooking prowess, then by all means! This is a great cookbook that can bring a delicious element of fun to mealtimes with a bunch of diverse fantasy-inspired foods.

Have you tried any recipes from this book? Do you have other geeky cookbooks to recommend? Feel free to comment below!