A LITERARY FEAST

Copyright © Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2015

All rights reserved.

Illustrations © Shutterstock

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

Jennifer Barclay has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK

www.summersdale.com

Printed and bound in the Czech Republic

eISBN: 978-1-78372-590-8

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Starters and Snacks

Mains

Desserts and Sweets

Conversion Tables

Index

Disclaimer

The recipes in this book are compiled as a culinary complement
to popular literature, and the author and publisher cannot
guarantee the accuracy or success of every recipe.

INTRODUCTION

‘For eating and reading are two pleasures
that combine admirably.’

C. S. Lewis

Irish poet Jonathan Swift’s poem ‘How Shall I Dine’ shows an utterly charming scene of a man carefully preparing his good quality mutton for the fire, spreading the cloth on the table and sharpening the knives. One way we judge and understand characters in literature is by the food they eat and how they eat it. In a play written by Euripides in the fifth century BC, we comprehend the grief felt by Medea after her husband Jason takes another woman when we hear: ‘She lies without food and gives herself up to suffering’. The hedonistic excesses of the Egyptian court of Cleopatra that have lured the noble Roman Antony away from his duties are conjured by Shakespeare in the incredulous exchange:

MECENAS: Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there. Is this true?

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS: This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more monstrous matter of feast.

How people think about food also makes a character unique. Who but Marian McAlpin, in Margaret Atwood’s first novel The Edible Woman, would think, as she chews a forkful of sponge cake, that ‘it felt spongy and cellular against her tongue, like the bursting of thousands of tiny lungs’?

We know people not only by what and how they eat but also by how they cook. In her 2003 novel Crescent, Diana Abu Jaber writes that tasting a piece of bread that someone has baked ‘is like looking out of their eyes’. Cooking is a pleasure that connects us across centuries and cultures, so that when we read the Chinese poet Bai Juyi (or Po Chu-i), who lived 772–846, describe ‘Eating Bamboo Shoots’, we can identify with his glee at finding himself in a place where they are abundant and cheap, and we are almost there inhaling the steam when he boils them in an earthen pot until the white skin opens ‘like new pearls’.

In this book, I have had the pleasure of uncovering some memorable scenes of food in well-loved literature from around the world – plays, poetry and novels – and pairing them with recipes so you can make your own literary feasts. I hope that grazing through this menu of culinary bon mots will give you as much enjoyment and satisfaction as I gleaned from preparing it.

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

So I did sit and eat.

From ‘Love’, George Herbert

STARTERS
AND SNACKS

To skip to Mains, go to p.71

TROCHILUS: At times he
wants to eat a dish of loach from
Phalerum; I seize my dish and
fly to fetch him some. Again he
wants some pea soup; I seize a
ladle and a pot and run to get it.

The Birds, Aristophanes

EASY-PEASY SOUP FOR
A DISCERNING PALATE

In this comic play from classical Greece, Trochilus, the ‘errand-bird’ is slave to Epops, a man who was turned into a hoopoe bird and asked his servant also to turn into a bird so he could continue to serve him. There’s nothing bird-like about his appetite, clearly.

Serves 8

Ingredients

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion or 2 spring onions

1 stalk celery

2 cloves chopped garlic

1 tsp chopped fresh mint

1.2 kg peas, fresh or frozen

1 litre stock (vegetable or chicken)

Salt and pepper

Optional:

Pine nuts

Preparation

1. Heat the oil and butter over a medium heat until the butter has melted.

2. Chop the onion and celery, and cook for several minutes until softened. Stir garlic and mint into the mix, and cook for a minute.

3. Add the peas and stock, increase the heat and bring to a simmer, then lower the heat and keep at a simmer for a minute or two until the peas are tender.

4. Blend until smooth, adding salt and pepper to taste.

5. Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan, if using, and sprinkle on top as a garnish.

Every Sunday my
grandfather used to bring
me an avocado pear
hidden at the bottom of
his briefcase.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

AVOCADO WITH GRAPE
JELLY DRESSING

A luncheon of avocado and crabmeat salad makes Esther remember her grandfather, who was head waiter at a country club and used to sneak home treats for her. The avocado arrived under the ‘six soiled shirts and the Sunday comics’ in his briefcase, and he served it with grape jelly vinaigrette.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 avocado, halved, stone removed

Handful of cooked and shelled prawns, chopped

Small ruby grapefruit, chopped

2 tsp grape or any red fruit jelly, e.g. redcurrant jelly

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp olive oil

Preparation

1. Mix the jelly, juice and oil into a dressing.

2. Fill both cups of the avocado pear with a mixture of prawns and grapefruit, and drench in dressing.

3. Serve with spoons.

ANCHOVIES AND ROASTED RED
PEPPERS FOR A FALSTAFFIAN APPETITE

Falstaff is asleep behind the arras, ‘snorting like a horse’, when Prince Henry and his men search his pockets and find receipts from his last few meals out. Falstaff washed his anchovies down with ‘sack’, a semi-fortified wine imported from Spain or its islands, not unlike what we today call sherry; here we add a little sherry vinegar for flavour – it won’t leave your guests snorting like horses.

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 large red peppers (pimientos) or equivalent quantity from jar

Head of garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp sherry vinegar

Salt and pepper 8 slices of crusty bread

8 small anchovy fillets (use the best quality you can find)

Preparation

1. If you’re preparing the peppers yourself, roast them whole under the grill in the oven for approximately 20 minutes or over a naked flame, turning until the skins are evenly charred all over. If you roast the peppers in the oven, put the head of garlic in to roast too with the top sliced off. Otherwise, roast the garlic by itself at 180°C for 20 minutes, until the cloves are soft.

2. Remove the peppers from the heat and allow them to cool in a bowl covered with a lid, or a plastic bag, for 15 minutes so that the steam helps the skin to separate from the flesh.

3. Remove the skins from the flesh, and scoop out the seedy insides using your hand or a knife, and discard, retaining as much juice as possible.

4. Cut the remaining fleshy parts of the peppers into thirds or smaller, toss in oil and sherry vinegar, season with salt and pepper and set aside.

5. Spread a little roasted garlic on each slice of bread. (If you’re using peppers from a jar or roasting them on a naked flame, you can chop a few cloves of garlic and add to the red peppers in oil and vinegar.)

6. Arrange the pieces of pepper on the bread, topping off with a couple of anchovy fillets and a little juice from the pepper mix.

Shakespeare’s Glutton

Though there are plenty of general references to ‘cakes and ale’ and foodstuffs like garlic and onions, there is little eating seen in Shakespeare’s plays, except where the portly Falstaff appears in Henry IV and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff is Shakespeare’s legendary glutton, with a vast appetite for food and drink which is one of the things that makes him, in spite of being vain and cowardly, a loveable rogue. He spends much time drinking at the Boar’s Head tavern.

He was one of Shakespeare’s most popular characters in his day, and remains so today, often being brought into productions of Henry V even though he has no lines in the actual play. Later works inspired by Shakespeare’s character (which may itself have been based on earlier versions) include Antonio Salieri’s 1799 opera Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1893 opera of the same name, and James White’s Falstaff’s Letters of 1796.

When I lift a forkful of
vegetables they glisten like
faceted jewels, uniformly cut.

Hunger, Jane Ward

GRILLED SALMON WITH SALSA
TOO GOOD TO LEAVE ON THE PLATE

Anna, a gifted cook, prepares this dish to perfection specially for her husband, hoping to get his attention, but he falls asleep over the plate, and she eats it herself. I would too. Being very particular, she removes any stray bones from the salmon beforehand with needle-nose pliers.

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 small fillets of salmon

1 small cucumber, peeled

2 plum tomatoes

1 small red pepper

1 medium red onion

1 avocado

Juice of 1 lime

Handful fresh coriander or cilantro

1 dollop wholegrain mustard

Preparation

1. First make the salsa, dicing all the vegetables uniformly and tossing with lime juice and coriander or cilantro so that they glisten like jewels.

2. Remove any stray bones from the salmon, then brush with the mustard before grilling it. Whether grilling on a barbecue or in an oven, use a slightly oiled rack or pan to prevent sticking, and grill the skin side first, then flip, for about 4 or 5 minutes each side depending on the heat and thickness of the pieces. The salmon should be browned on the outside and retain a little pink inside.

3. Serve with the salsa.

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

From ‘Address to a Haggis’, Robert Burns

HAGGIS-STUFFED MUSHROOMS

Reader, your time would be better spent reading Robert Burns or writing poetry than actually making your own haggis. It’s far too much effort. But here’s an interesting way to serve it, for a change from tatties and neeps. If you use vegetarian haggis, this makes a great non-meat starter; for vegans, omit the cheese. If you use smaller mushrooms, they make fine bite-sized snacks.

Serves 8 (or 3–4 as a main course, served
with salad and a dram of whisky)

Ingredients

Few generous glugs of olive oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

400 g haggis, removed from casing

40 g pine nuts

1 tbsp fresh chopped marjoram or parsley

Salt and ground black pepper

8 large flat portobello mushrooms

40 g breadcrumbs or crumbled oatcakes

40 g Parmesan, pecorino or sharp Cheddar

Preparation

1. Heat the oven to 200°C.

2. Wash the mushrooms and dry carefully, remove the stalks but don’t discard.

3. Warm the olive oil in a frying pan and gently sauté the garlic for 5 minutes.

4. Chop the mushroom stalks and add them to the pan.

5. Add the haggis, pine nuts and marjoram or parsley, and stir to heat through, adding in salt and pepper to taste.

6. Fill the mushrooms with the haggis mixture.

7. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and cheese, and bake on a baking sheet or in a gratin dish in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar, procured from town;
And, lastly, o’er the flavoured compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
O green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
’T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat.

From ‘A Recipe for Salad’, Sydney Smith

EGG AND POTATO
HERBACEOUS TREAT SALAD

Sydney Smith’s doggerel poem made the recipe for this starter easy to memorise. Retaining the essence of the recipe, I have left out the pounding and sieving, and added a little rocket. The Lucca region of Italy produces a superior olive oil.

Serves 2

Ingredients

4–6 new potatoes

2 spring onions

2 handfuls of rocket leaves or green beans

Salt and pepper

3 eggs

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp wholegrain mustard

1 tsp anchovy sauce

Preparation

1. Boil and then halve the potatoes.

2. Chop the onions finely.

3. Roughly tear the rocket leaves or steam the green beans.