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“Around the time that Martha Stewart did her Entertaining book, I became obsessed,” says Cassandra Peterson, the actress and author perhaps best known for portraying Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. “I decided Elvira was the Martha of the macabre, and that someday I was going to write a cookbook like hers, but for the goth crowd.”
Dreams, it seems, do come true. Earlier this week, Peterson released Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell: hot, Spooky Soirées and Celebrations for Every Occasion, a compendium of on-brand recipes (“Ghastly Ghost Meringues,” “Sinister Minestrone,” and “Roasted Brains,” a cauliflower dish), craft projects, and party-hosting tips that seem perfect for Halloween but could be translated to nearly any social situation.
Peterson says that while her character is famously unreliable in the kitchen, she herself learned to cook as a teenager on a trip to Italy and has long collected and developed recipes. Just as exciting as sharing those, however, is joining the cookbook-author club, as she herself is an enthusiastic collector of them. “You should see the number of cookbooks I have,” she says, citing Stewart and the Italian cooking writer Marcella Hazan as favorites. “There are so many I practically need another room in my house.”
She puts them to good use. The night before our chat, Peterson—who does stock branded aprons, cutting boards, and more in her online store—says she made Hazan’s famous tomato sauce (“I have it in my refrigerator right now!”), and the night before that she hosted friends for a dinner party “Two nights ago was my birthday, and I had people come over for dinner,” she says. “It’s going to be disappointing to my fans, but I made a very normal dinner and used mostly things from my garden. I had salmon—not from my garden—with charred corn and cherry tomatoes and a big quinoa salad.”
Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell
Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell isn’t Peterson’s first book. After collaborating on a number of character-themed novels in 2021 she published the memoir Yours Cruelly, Elvira and she recently released the children’s book Elvira’s First Book of Monsters. It’s a part of the business she seems excited about, especially since she’s less keen these days to dress up as her most famous character (“I kind of cut it off,” she recently told People.) “I am thinking along the line of books,” she says. “I’ve done, the autobiography, a children’s book, and a cookbook, now I might go in a different direction. I really do enjoy the writing process.”
Before I could let her go, I had to ask the famously fiendish Peterson what her own ideal last meal would be “There’s this weird thing I make; I think it’s Turkish,” she says. “It’s plain yogurt with some grated garlic stirred in and two poached eggs, butter, and chili crisp quarter on the top.” She pauses for a beat. “Maybe you had better add a little a little black food coloring stirred into the yogurt. You know, it couldn’t hurt.”
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