Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Dinner & Movie Night

The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Dinner & Movie Night That Broke My Brain (In the Best Way)

I almost did not do this chapter. That is my confession and I am leading with it.

When I sat down to plan the Eat Like a Hero cookbook, I mapped out twelve films. Solid twelve. Avengers, Black Widow, Ant-Man, Thor, the whole lineup. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was not on that list. Not because I do not love it. The opposite. It is my absolute favorite film in the entire MCU. A complete and total mind trip. Sam Raimi directing a Marvel movie is exactly as unhinged and wonderful as it sounds, and I was fully obsessed with it from the first watch.

The problem was that I could not figure out a good meal for it. The film is surreal and horror-adjacent and visually chaotic in the best possible way. It felt like trying to plate a fever dream. So I left it off, figured I had a strong twelve, and moved on.

Then I sent an email to my list.

I asked my people which chapters they wanted most. I expected Iron Man. I expected the original Avengers. I expected Guardians. What I did not expect was for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to come back as the most requested movie in the entire series. By a significant margin. My audience surprised me, and honestly, delighted me, because it meant I had to go back and figure out the one chapter I had been quietly the most excited about all along.

Matt and I sat down to rewatch it, which is never a hardship, and somewhere around the third multiverse jump I had it. The whole meal clicked into place at once. And I have to tell you, with some real sincerity, this might be the best meal I have ever created for this brand.

If you want every recipe from this chapter and the full MCU lineup, grab Eat Like a Hero right here 👉 https://thefairytalefoodie.com/products/eat-like-a-hero but keep reading because this chapter has a whole lot of story behind it.

Here is what we ate:

Drink: The Scarlet Witch Appetizer: Pizza Poppa’s Pizza Balls Salad: I Love You in Every Universe Salad Main: Scarlet Witch’s Chaos Magic Pasta Dessert: The Darkhold

All of it is in the cookbook. 👉 https://thefairytalefoodie.com/products/eat-like-a-hero

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The Scarlet Witch

Let me be very clear about something. Elizabeth Olsen is doing the most in this film. She is chewing scenery in the most delicious way, she is terrifying, she is heartbreaking, she is wearing the full Scarlet Witch look with the crown and the dramatic cape and the red chaos magic swirling everywhere. She is putting on a masterclass and she deserved every second of her screentime.

She also deserved her own cocktail.

The Scarlet Witch is a strawberry margarita situation, deeply red, served in a round fishbowl glass over ice with a cutie orange float on top. I soaked the orange in Everclear and lit it on fire. It burns blue at the base and orange at the top, which if you think about it is extremely Wanda of it. The whole thing sits on a red light-up coaster that makes the glass glow from underneath like chaos magic is literally powering it.

A quick note because I love you: Everclear is very high proof and the flame is real. Please treat it with respect. Do not lean over it, do not leave it unattended, and do not serve it to anyone who might treat it as a dare. It is a show-stopper, not a stunt.

When Matt and I lit both of ours at the same time for photos, I genuinely lost it a little. It looked like the opening credits had come to life on our kitchen counter.

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Pizza Poppa’s Pizza Balls

There is exactly one food scene in this entire film, and if you blinked you almost missed it. When Strange and America Chavez land on Earth 838, they stumble into what is unmistakably a New York street corner, and America immediately gets a pizza ball from Pizza Poppa’s cart. She says you don’t have to pay for food in other universes and eats it while walking away. It lasts about fifteen seconds.

I paused the movie on that shot.

My appetizer wrote itself.

I used Rhodes dinner rolls as the base because they bake up into the exact puffy, golden, slightly irregular shape you see in the film. I filled them with pizza sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni, let them rise and bake until the cheese was bubbling over the top. Then I served them on a tiered tray with a little pedestal bowl of extra marinara right in the center because this is a date night and presentation is everything.

The same homemade marinara that goes into the pizza balls also goes into the Chaos Magic Pasta, so this whole meal is quietly one cohesive sauce situation with two very different personalities.

Matt is a pizza person through and through. He would eat pizza for every meal if I let him, which I mostly do because I also love pizza and this is not a battle I intend to fight. He ate every single pizza ball. There were no leftovers. He was not remotely apologetic about it.

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I Love You in Every Universe Salad

I am going to tell you about my favorite line in any MCU movie.

There is a moment when Strange and Christine Palmer are standing in the ruins of a universe that is not their own. Everything has gone sideways. The multiverse is unraveling. And Strange looks at her, a version of her he has never met and will never see again, and he says it. “I love you in every universe.”

I cried the first time I saw it. I cry every time I see it. I am a complete and total sap and I have made my peace with that.

The salad is my love letter to that moment. Mixed greens with blackberries, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and a balsamic dressing. Star-shaped croutons scattered through the bowl because Strange’s portals have always looked like ruptures in the night sky to me. And heart-shaped mozzarella slices tucked in among the greens, which sounds extremely cheesy in every possible sense of the word, and I fully stand by it.

It is a beautiful salad. It is also an extremely romantic salad. If you make this for someone and they do not say something sweet to you, that is information.

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Scarlet Witch’s Chaos Magic Pasta

This is the one. This is the dish that made me feel like I had actually figured out this chapter.

Homemade marinara with giant meatballs, served over squid ink pasta. That is the whole pitch. The execution, though, is the thing.

Squid ink pasta is jet black. Actual, deep, unapologetically black. When you pile a glossy red meat sauce and two enormous meatballs in the center of it, you get a color contrast that is almost aggressive. It looks like it belongs in this film. It looks like something Wanda conjured. It looks like chaos and beauty at the same time, which if I am being honest is exactly how I would describe the movie.

The marinara is the same sauce from the pizza balls, cooked down longer and deeper for the pasta. The meatballs are homemade, large enough to be ridiculous, which is the correct size. Everything is finished with grated parmesan, fresh parsley, and a little extra sauce spooned over the top.

I will tell you honestly that eating jet black pasta is a slightly surreal experience, especially while watching a movie about alternate dimensions. It tastes completely normal. It looks like you are eating something from another universe. If the color gives you pause, regular spaghetti works fine and you will still get the full red Scarlet Witch effect from the sauce. But I do think the black pasta is worth it. It is a commitment to the bit, and this chapter earns that.

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The Darkhold

In the film, the Darkhold is the book of the damned. It corrupts everyone who reads it. It contains the accumulated dark magic of every universe. It is basically the worst book you could possibly check out from a library.

It is also a very good dessert concept.

Dark chocolate molten lava cake, homemade (or you can usually find them in the freezer section at any grocery store) and doctor it up, because I am not ashamed of a strategic shortcut when the end result looks like this. Cocoa powder dusted on the plate in a swoosh. Raspberry coulis for the deep red contrast. Vanilla ice cream because you need something cold and clean against all that intensity. Fresh raspberries on top.

And then the sparkler.

I knew from the very beginning of planning this chapter that I wanted sparklers somewhere. Non-negotiable. The portals in this film are some of the most visually exciting things in the entire MCU, that spinning, crackling, brilliant light, and I wanted a moment in this meal that captured that energy.

The dessert is where it lands. You plate everything, you get settled, and then you light the sparkler and you have about thirty seconds of pure magic. It is the portal opening. It is the multiverse cracking open right there on your table.

I grew up in California where fireworks are not legal, so the fact that I can just pick sparklers up at a grocery store in Arizona is something that still delights me. Small victories.

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The Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness Dinner Full Spread

When everything came together on the table, Matt and I just stood there for a second. The glowing red cocktails. The pizza balls with the marinara. The jet black pasta bowls. The menu card. All of it lit with the red glow from the coasters and the Bias lighting behind the TV synced up to match the film.

This is the meal I did not plan to make. The chapter that almost did not exist. And it became, without question, one of my favorites in this entire cookbook.

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Make This Meal

Make this Dr Strange Inspired Meal

This chapter is one I almost skipped and it turned out to be one of the best things in the cookbook. Every recipe is in Eat Like a Hero, including The Scarlet Witch cocktail, Pizza Poppa’s Pizza Balls, the I Love You in Every Universe Salad, Scarlet Witch’s Chaos Magic Pasta, and The Darkhold.

Grab your copy of Eat Like a Hero right here 👉 https://thefairytalefoodie.com/products/eat-like-a-hero

If you make this one, tag me. Wanda would have wanted it.