Horror fans know that food and scary movies are not unfamiliar bedfellows. From the people-filled cotton candy balloons in Killer Klowns From Outer Space to the people-filled meat pies in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and the waifers made of… people… in Soylent Green, the two go together like cookies and Authentic Bulgarian Miak. If you’re someone who likes to pair your horror movies with a nice snack, we would like to introduce you to someone who will help you take things up a notch: Richard S. Sargent.
Sargent is the author of The Horror Movie Night Cookbook, a collection of food and cocktail recipes that he personally crafted based on some of his favorite horror movies. Recently, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Sargent about his delectable concoctions, and he even shared that he does have a favorite recipe among the many offerings. “The Pavlova that’s from Cabin Fever called The Close Shave… with the Crรจme Chantilly and the Berry Compote,” he said, is his “favorite dessert.”
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The film school student-turned-chef admitted that he’s “made it like 100 times to get it right,” adding with a surprised tone, “It sounds simple, but it’s a very… ‘What’s that?’” Sargent continued, “It’s one that’s a little harder to make if you’re a perfectionist. If you’re going to get angry about cracks in it, you might have to do it a couple times, but yeah, so my friends just really, they loved it and they won’t shut up about it, and they want it every time they come visit, so it’s become my favorite one.”
When asked how he came up with the concept of the Horror Movie Night Cookbook, Sargent notes that even he found it to be “kind of a strange idea.” He continued, “My friends and I were doing a play. We were doing The Woman in Black, and we were just talking about horror in general and how none of them were fans or really knew anything about horror films, and I couldn’t believe it, and so as a horror lover, I thought it was my job to introduce them to all of the classics… ones I thought they would appreciate, as well as ones that have sort of shaped my understanding of the horror genre.”
He went on to recall, “So I said, ‘You know what? We’re going to do horror movie nights. You’re going to come over. We’re going to watch movies,’ but rather than just do pizza and beer or popcorn, I wanted to make it fun because that’s what I do. I’m a little over the top.”
“So we decided to do three movies a night, and each film would have a course with it as well as a drink,” Sargent said. “I did it once, and then they just expected it from then on, so then it turned into a thing, my little dinner party situation. Then about halfway through I’d say five or six into them, they were like, ‘What are you doing with this? Because this is amazing and other people are going to want to do this,’ so it got me thinking, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ So I came up with the cookbook idea.”ย
The Horror Movie Night Cookbook is now available to own from Ulysses Press. Click here to pick up your own copy from Amazon.
