Magic: The Gathering’s multiverse is one of the most vibrant and varied settings in any game. One moment you could be huddling to survive the night with the humans of Innistrad, the next, you could be partying with the Cabaretti of New Capenna. Each plane offers something new, but one thing we don’t often think about is the food those worlds must eat.

That’s exactly what is explored in Magic: The Gathering – Cuisines Of The Multiverse. An official cookbook by Victoria Rosenthal and Jenna Helland, it offers up 231 pages of recipes and lore. I don’t have a culinary bone in my body, but I do love poring over anything about the planes of Magic, and publisher Insight Editions has given us a recipe from one of my favourite settings to reveal.

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It’s hard to describe just how much I love Kamigawa. It’s a cyberpunk world of neon-soaked streets and dangerous gangs, combined with the spiritualism of Japanese mythology. Kami live alongside biker rats, Moonfolk hackers take on contracts of corporate espionage, and Samurai have to balance their old traditions with the rise of cybernetics. It’s a gorgeous realm, and the basis of my all-time favourite set Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and now you can get a taste of it with the Stomwatcher’s Delight.

Stormwatcher’s Delight is a gyudon, or beef bowl, served on a bed of black rice. Topped with kimchi, nori, shoga, and sesame seeds, it may look complicated to prepare but it’s just a two out of five on the book’s difficulty rating.

Stormwatcher’s Delight

Ingredients

Black Rice

  • Three cups of cooked rice
  • Half a cup of black rice
  • Water

Gyudon

  • Two tablespoons of sugar
  • One tablespoon of ichimi togarashi
  • One tablespoon of wasabi
  • One two-inch piece of ginger
  • Six minced cloves of garlic
  • One and a half cups of beef stock
  • Three tablespoons of soy sauce
  • Two tablespoons of sake
  • Three tablespoons of mirin
  • Three tablespoons of kimchi juice
  • Canola oil
  • Two king oyster mushrooms, sliced
  • One and a half onions, thinly sliced
  • Two pounds of ribeye steak, very thinly sliced

Per Serving

  • Cooked black rice
  • Kimchi, sliced
  • Kizami nori
  • Beni shoga
  • Black sesame seeds
read more

Recipe

Black Rice

Place the rice, black rice, and water in a rice cooker. Follow the instructions on your rice cooker and cook the rice.

Gyudon

Combine the sugar, ichimi togarashi, wasabi, ginger, garlic, beef stock, soy sauce, sake, mirin, and kimchi juice in a medium bowl and set aside.

Heat a medium pot with one tablespoon of canola oil over medium-high heat. Add the king oyster mushrooms and panfry until golden brown, about five to eight minutes, per side.

Add the onions and cook until softened, another five minutes.Add the broth mixture and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and allow the sauce to simmer for five minutes. Add the ribeye.

Simmer for five to eight minutes, or until the meat is just cooked

Assembly

To serve, place one half of a cup of cooked rice in a bowl and top with the gyudon.

Pour a small amount of the sauce over the beef.

Top with kimchi, kizami nori, beni shoga, and black sesame seeds.

Boseiju, Who Endures by Chris Ostrowski

Aside from its recipes looking delicious, one of my favourite things about this book is the snippets of lore contained throughout. Recipes are separated by plane, with chapters based on Kamigawa, Innistrad, Dominaria, Ravnica, Kaldheim, Zendikar, Kaladesh, Ixalan, Theros, and even Eldraine, with each giving us a little insight into the worlds. Ravnica’s follows the goblin Krenko as he ventures across the city, while Dominaria’s gives us cookery lessons from its most favourite chef, Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar.

Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar by Ryan Pancoast

A particular favourite of mine is the two different ways to prepare a roast chicken, inspired by the competitive zombie-raising siblings of Innistrad, Gisa and Geralf. Cutting up a chicken thick isn’t too different from stitching together corpses, after all. Is any of it canon? Probably not, but it’s such a nice framing device that I found myself reading through some of the recipes I had no intention of making just for the snippets of worldbuilding they offer.

The instructions are all super simple to follow, too, making even the higher-difficulty recipes simple enough to follow for the culinarily inept, like me.

Like lots of gaming-themed cookbooks, there are a few slightly tenuous inclusions to justify a recipe, such as a random babka in the Zendikar section or “necromancer’s pasta” that is just black pasta for Innistrad, a plane that otherwise has zero connection to Italy in its theming.

But they still look delicious, and when you’re just wanting a few snacks to spread out across your Commander night, you can do worse than this.

Magic: The Gathering - Cuisines Of The Multiverse

Title Magic: The Gathering - Cuisines Of The Multiverse Author Jenna Helland & Victoria Rosenthal Pages 232 Genre Cookery Publication Date November 28, 2023 Publisher Insight Editions $35.99 at Amazon Expand Collapse

Magic: The Gathering – Cuisines Of The Multiverse is available November 28, 2023 through most book retailers.

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