Inside a Witches Dinner Party with Elettra Wiedemann

By Food & Wine
Updated May 08, 2019
Photo © Davide Luciano
For Halloween, the Impatient Foodie crafts a tale of witches deep in the forest, who feast on bug brittle and bloody beet soup.
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An Imagined Dinner Party

Photo © Davide Luciano

Impatient Foodie's Elettra Wiedemann: “We took inspiration from stories we remembered from childhood, some iconic and others more personal.” Read more about the Imagined Dinner Party Series.

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"Stuffed" Mini Chicken Pot Pies

Photo © Davide Luciano

“Our chicken potpies with the chicken feet sticking out come from Roald Dahl’s amazing book The Twits. (Granted, the characters in that book were not witches, but they certainly looked and acted like them!)”

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Escargot

Photo © Davide Luciano

“When I was about four years old, my mother took me to a dinner party in Paris and I watched in horror as they gleefully ate snails and frogs legs. I remember being glued to my chair, wide-eyed, horrified and suspicious that perhaps my mom and her friends might all be witches. Was I on the menu next?"

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Bloody Beet Soup

Photo © Davide Luciano

"We imagined things these witches would forage in the forest, like weeds instead of salad leaves, and bugs baked into brittle. The salad is covered in Dana Cowin’s buttermilk dressing from her recent book Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen, which is so delicious it would make anything (including this chickweed) taste delectable."

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Grilled Coca-Cola Braised Beef Tongue

Photo © Davide Luciano

“The inspiration for the tongue came from various stories of witches putting together their brews and potions (eye of newt is surprisingly hard to come by). The witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, call for the “tongue of dog” … I couldn’t bring myself to go quite that far and had never cooked tongue before, so we used Danny Bowien’s cow tongue recipe. We also liked that this tongue was braised in Coca-Cola: A nice nod to the sugar of Halloween, and why not? These are young, modern witches after all!”

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Pumpkin Halloween Cheesecake

Photo © Davide Luciano

“Everything on this table is edible. Something like the bug brittle can be baked, placed on the cheesecake and then removed before consumption if you or your guests don’t feel up to munching on a grasshopper or beetle. With this dinner party, we wanted to bring back a little bit of fright to Halloween. I think many witches would be disappointed with the food fare suggested these days: It’s not quite scary and ghastly enough.”

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A Witch!

Photo © Davide Luciano

“Witches of the world, wherever you are, we hope we made you proud. Happy Halloween.” Credits: Recipes developed by Claudia Ficca and Elettra Wiedemann of Impatient Foodie, unless otherwise specified. Photographer: Davide Luciano, Food stylist: Claudia Ficca, Prop Stylist: Maeve Sheridan, Florals: Putnam Flowers, Styling: Chloe Hartstein, Creative Director: Elettra Wiedemann, Costumes: New York Vintage

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