When I first blogged about food in Robinson Crusoe I promised that I would – like the eponymous protagonist – try cooking with goat, as soon as I sourced some goat meat. Well, goat meat has arrived at my local farmers’ market, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to try it out. Continue reading “The Civilizing Effects of Food”
Pea Soup
One of the starters at the First World War Supper Club has a long and distinguished history in literature. Pea soup – which appears in May Byron’s Pot-luck, our source recipe book for our 1914-inspired menu – is mentioned in the Ancient Greek play, The Birds, by Aristophanes (first performed 414BC). The servant of Tereus, an Athenian prince who has been turned into a bird, explains how he must serve his master and bring him all types of food: “Again he wants some pea-soup; I seize a ladle and a pot and run to get it.”
Continue reading “Pea Soup”
First World War Supper Club
If you’re heading out for dinner in the rather exclusive North London area of Primrose Hill, a church might not be your most obvious choice of venue. However, last night my friend Lou and I took over the kitchens of St Mary’s Primrose Hill, to hold our first ever supper club. Taking the First World War as our theme, we served up 3 courses – all inspired by dishes eaten widely in 1914 – to 21 paying guests, with all the profits going to the church’s youthwork.
Quinces
For this post I am going to break my rule of literary chronology, leaving the early 18th century novel for the time being in order to revisit the late 16th century and an author who has featured frequently in this blog, namely Mr William Shakespeare. And the cause of this literary rewind is the quince, the strange, knobbly pear-like fruit which, as the Observer food writer Nigel Slater says, “can’t be eaten raw” and is “a devil to peel”. We have a quince tree in the garden and about a month ago my landlady challenged me to find some literary/culinary uses for the plethora of fruit that ripen and rot very quickly if not picked and made good use of; I like a challenge, so the research began.