The Nightmare Before Dinner: Recipes to Die For: The Beetle House Cookbook

by Zach Neil

Get your goth on with 60+ recipes from Beetle House restaurant, where guests indulge in a deadly delicious menu inspired by the works of Tim Burton and all things dark and curious.

If you delight in ghoulish frights and movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and The Evil Dead; then you’ll love the official cookbook of Beetle House, the Halloween-inspired restaurant with locations in New York and Los Angeles.

The Nightmare Before Dinner features more than 60 gothically delicious recipes from chef-owner Zach Neil, including sauces and dips for the recently deceased, eerie appetizers, sinister sides, soups and salads for the living, macabre mains, devilish desserts, deadly drinks, and creepy cocktails. Knock out your family, friends, and guests with:
 

• Beetle Pie, inspired by Beetlejuice – a brilliant-green homemade pistachio pudding with a crunchy chocolate crust that evokes the corpse-fed grass and rich soil of a graveyard, and seedy and sweet blackberry jam that mimics the texture of blood and bugs
  
• Silence of the Lamb Chops, inspired by Silence of the Lambs – a tasty lamb dish with a buttery mushroom and apple sauce, made gory with splashes of raspberry glaze
• Cheshire Mac and Cheese, inspired by Alice in Wonderland – a sweet-and-spicy take on one of America’s beloved comfort foods, served in a teacup
• Edward Burger Hands, inspired by Edward Scissorhands – a juicy burger with a Sriracha cream sauce, stuffed with smoked bacon, fried egg, pepper jack cheese, and avocado; with a pair of scissors shoved through it to keep it closed
• The Fleet Street Martini, inspired by Sweeney Todd – a bright-red martini featuring Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey; pair with equally gory Love It Pot Pie

Plus, if you’re vegan or vegetarian, The Nightmare Before Dinner has your spooky side covered too—it offers a vegan alternative or ingredient swap for each and every recipe in the book!

Throw your own goth-themed party! A bonus section provides inspiration for table settings, decorations, and foods to serve at your holiday or screening party.

This is the perfect cookbook for the Tim Burton movie buff, Halloween enthusiast, or goth in your life.

Also available by Zach Neil: Death for Dinner Cookbook: 60 Gorey-Good, Plant-Based Drinks, Meals, and Munchies Inspired by Your Favorite Horror Films

• ISBN13: 9781631065781
• Publish Date: 18 October 2018 (first published 2 October 2018)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 26 October 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Race Point Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 164
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Nightmare Before Dinner is a new theme restaurant inspired cookbook from Zach Neil and the Beetle House. Due out 16th Oct 2018 by Quarto group's Race Point imprint, it's 192 pages and available in hardback and ebook formats.

Whilst I've never generally been a fan of 'theme' restaurants, I do adore Tim Burton and whimsy along with the Gothic aesthetic. This cookbook is full of all of the above along with genuinely delicious recipes for appealingly presented food with a lot of humor.

I tried one of the very first recipes in the book, Edward Sauce, and it's wonderful. It's a sour cream and mayo based dipping sauce with a fair bit of kick from the sriracha and other ingredients. Really delicious.

A lot of restaurant based cookbooks, and indeed quite a percentage of restaurants are unbelievably pretentious and recreating the recipes takes a lot of specialist ingredients which are difficult to source alongside a lot of eye-wateringly expensive equipment. This cookbook is afflicted with neither problem. The ingredients are easy to find and the equipment is likely to be had in any home kitchen.

The chapters are roughly arranged in meal order: sauces & dips, appetizers, soups & salads, main courses, desserts, drinks, with a chapter of fun theme menus at the end.

The author has included tips for making the dishes vegan friendly (mostly consisting of using vegan friendly ingredients). All these dishes could easily be 'tamed down' somewhat and incorporated into a regular meny that wouldn't scandalize your elderly auntie. There are a number of dishes with a decidedly spicy twist, chipotle, cayenne, and sriracha sauce figure large in many of the recipes, so proceed with caution if you have a gues who doesn't tolerate a bit of heat in their foods.

Appealing, irreverent, funny, and tasty. As an example... here are the how-to instructions for the abovementioned Edward Sauce:

To Make It
1. Place all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk the shit out of them. Your finished sauce should have the consistency of mayonnaise.

Four stars, I'll be making a lot more of these recipes regularly.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

[Eve1972]

So I'll admit, I have a thing for cookbooks that tie into movies, tv shows, and books. Needless to say, when I saw this one up on NetGalley I just knew that I had to make it mine. I am a HUGE fan of Tim Burton, and one of my favorite movies is THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Making this cookbook a match made in book reviewing heaven for me.





This was an entertaining cookbook to flip through. It had a nice array of photos, colorful graphics, and fun fonts that made it visually pleasing.

This cookbook is divided into the following chapters...
-- Introduction: This Is Halloween
-- Beetle House Must-Haves
-- Sauces & Dips for the Recently Deceased
-- Nightmares Before Dinner
-- Herbs, Plants & Cauldrons
-- Platos de Los Muertos
-- Tricks & Treats
-- Poisons, Potions & Elixirs
-- Put the FUN Back in Funeral

Each chapter includes a plethora of exciting recipes that include a little introduction to the recipes. Followed by well laid out and easy to follow instructions on how to make the dish. All finished off with an extra TIP or GO VEGAN.





Here is just a small taste of the yummy recipes you will find inside...
-- Edward Sauce
-- Veruca Sauce
-- Brains & Chips
-- Beetle Bacon Bread
-- Giant Peach Salad
-- Cheshire Mac and Cheese
-- Sweeney Beef (I love that this one is served with a switchblade knife (lol).
-- Silence of the Lamb Chops
-- Shrimpy Hollow
-- Bloodbath Cobbler
-- The Beetle’s Juice
-- Alice’s Cup of Tea

I enjoyed this one a lot, and I think it would make a fantastic gift for any Tim Burton lover who enjoys cooking!