From blog post to plate

Whilst my blog is grounded in cooking that I actually do, inspired by the plays, novels and poems I have read, I suspect that, for the vast majority of my readers, my blog provides them with reading matter (rather than with recipes).

However, over the last few months I’ve been delighted to discover that occasionally a reader does try out one of my recipes.

For example, in July 2022 a reader commented that she had made my recipe for the ‘mustard soup‘ from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by the 2018 Polish Nobel prize winning novelist Olga Tokarczuk for her book club meeting to discuss the novel. Whilst this was gratifying, as I commented in the post I have Tokarczuk to thank for the recipe as she provides the instructions more or less within the narrative of the novel.

Another recipe that has been followed by readers – and was pleasingly entirely of my own creation – was my recipe for ‘civil orange cake‘ inspired by Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The name of the cake plays on a pun used by Beatrice, the play’s central female character, who teases the young hero Claudio for his jealousy (when he mistakenly believes that Don Pedro, his lord, has wooed Hero – the woman Claudio loves – for himself, rather than for Claudio as he had promised to do). Beatrice notes of the sulking Claudio that:

The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry
nor well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something
of that jealous complexion. (II, 1, 269-271)

Since I was writing a post about the metaphorical use of food in Shakespeare’s plays, I took Beatrice’s play on the similarity between the words ‘civil’ and ‘Seville’ and devised a ‘civil orange cake’ which included both orange zest and juice, and Seville orange marmalade.

About a year ago I was surprised – and delighted – to receive an email from the Director of Marketing and Communications of Shakespeare & Company, an American theatre company based in Massachussetts who put on a Shakespeare festival every summer. In 2022 one of their chosen plays was Much Ado About Nothing and, having identified my recipe from an internet search, they requested permission to reprint it (and the blog post) in their playbill (which I was happy to give).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was good to see that one of the staff members had tried making the cake herself – to good results (phew). Telling an English teacher friend about this, who was teaching Much Ado to his Year 8 class at Chesham Grammar School in Buckinghamshire, he decided to give his students a practical homework and get them to follow my recipe and make their own Civil Orange Cakes. Some of their amazing results can be seen below – well done everyone!

So, if any other readers try out my recipes – and they work – please take a photo and send it to me!