With everyone blogging or tweeting today about the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to ‘revive’ my Henry V recipe. The Battle of Agincourt is the dramatic high-point of Shakespeare’s history play, a battle in which, against all the odds, the vastly outnumbered English win a definitive victory against the French. Continue reading “Agincourt”
Tag: Shakespeare
Fig and Walnut Tarte Tatin
GUARDSMAN: Here is a rural fellow
That will not be denied your highness’ presence.
He brings you figs.
CLEOPATRA: Let him come in. (Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra) Continue reading “Fig and Walnut Tarte Tatin”
A Danish Break
A deviation from my journey through food in English literature, but after a recent short break in Copenhagen I felt inspired to try my hand at a bit of Danish baking, and blog about it. So this post is more about moving from the pages of the guidebook – rather than those of literary texts – to the plate. Continue reading “A Danish Break”
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.