About the Author:
Nichola Fletcher lives in Scotland and France and is multiskilled. She originally trained as an artist goldsmith, a skill she still practices. But she has also spent thirty years perfecting her knowledge of venison, having pioneered Europe’s first deer farm with her husband. She was nominated for a Slow Food Award for this work. As a food writer she has written four books on the culture, history, and cooking of game meats; lectures and demonstrates worldwide; and writes for the Financial Times. Her unusual combination of talents provides the perfect grounding for her remarkable study of the art of feasting for which she was awarded a Gourmet Voice Media Award. She has two daughters.
From Publishers Weekly:
Starred Review. We all eat, but how many of us know how to feast? If Fletcher, a food writer and occasional feast designer, has her way, we'll all be reconsidering our party habits. True, we're not likely to offer cannibalistic banquets (she discusses those of Fiji, New Guinea, the Aztecs and others), or platters of cats with rats (a dish from the 1870 siege of Paris), or Kwakiutl-style blubber-eating competitions. Even the complex Ruskin feast that Fletcher herself catered (seviche of wood pigeon, wild greens, Coniston char, and roast venison with wild bramble sauce, all served on pollen-inspired ceramic platters, with readings from Wordsworth and Ruskin) for a scholarly set of foodies in the middle of a British forest at sunset seems best left to its designated guests. But as Fletcher describes Roman, medieval, Renaissance, Persian, Japanese and Chinese feasting traditions, some universal elements emerge. Feasts often celebrate key life events and feature symbolic foods like eggs (for birth and fertility) or candied almonds (bitter and sweet, like life). Nature is either evoked or revoked, but rarely ignored. Fletcher serves her culinary history buffet-style; thematic chapters on meat or fish are followed by palate-cleansing pauses to examine oddities like 18th-century French food writer Grimod's funeral banquets or Mr. Billings's horseback dinner in 1903, followed by chapters on Victorian banquets and modern Day of the Dead rituals. This is a veritable cook's tour of a mesmerizing social custom. Photos. <
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