In designing the menu for Wordsworth’s Boudicca Banquet (food, wine, music) I said we would take the best elements from the Baroque dining era, updated for the 21st century. I should have added “and for Hackney in February”.
The main event was the unveiling of Boudicca, Dissenters N16’s ‘new’ painted harpsichord (30 years in the making) transporting us back to 17th-century European musical haute couture (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Monteverdi).
My job was to elevate the food to Boudicca’s high standards, with inspiration drawn from images of groaning tables laden with meat, fish and vegetables, overflowing goblets of wine and cider and raucous revelry.
What the artistic renditions of the period don’t always reflect are the diner’s appalling dental health (requiring the need for soft food), and that most of the food was lukewarm or cold due to the distance between kitchen and dining hall. Cutlery was still a novelty and food was mostly eaten with fingers, using the table cloth as a napkin.
On the plus side, many new foods were introduced to European dining tables including potatoes, chocolate and spices, and sweet and savoury were often combined (it was during this period the original mince pie, a sweet/savoury combo, was in vogue).
The aristocratic diet was largely built around estate fish and game (peacock and swan were feasting centrepieces) and seasonal, with a lot of salting, curing and smoking, preserves, chutneys and relishes. Most cooking was done on or over an open kitchen fireplace.
With modern kitchen gadgetry allowing hot food, cutlery and napkins (and adjustments for a dietarily diverse East London audience, and February), our menu for the banquet began with a platter of smoked mackerel pâté and smoked eel on brioche, and tomato sourdough toasts.
Then BBQ poussin spiced with cinnamon, ginger and clove, served with a celeriac, parsnip and apple rémoulade, seasoned with sweet, sharp foraged saltmarsh horseradish vinegar.
The game course was venison pie seasoned with foraged bramble and elderflower jelly, a Fur & Feather Fricasée of rabbit, pheasant, pigeon and guinea fowl. There were fish pies and swede and carrot pies, and assorted potato and vegetable dishes.
Exotic moulded fruit jellies next, as a feature of the Baroque dining table. I made a clementine and rhubarb version with rhubarb fool, light and sharp enough to cut through what had come before.
Cheese and fruit were served as local artist Victoria Francis unveiled her awe-inspiring paintings for the harpsichord lid, flanked by the Elastic Band all-stars Armen Boldy (who made the harpsichord body and sang Handel accompanied by Thomas Ang, Julien Harman-Evans, Sue Eversden and Tim Eaton).
It was as Baroque as Stoke Newington gets, especially on a Friday night in early 2024.
I didn’t take enough food photos, sadly, as we were too busy!
With thanks to Ruth Whitehead for the musical vision, Ruth Whitehead Associates for sponsorship, chefstar Quentin Stephan for help and company in the kitchen.
Wordsworth’s is a community kitchen (every Monday from 11am-1.30pm) and supperclub by Daffodil Soup based at St Matthias Hall on Wordsworths Road n Stoke Newington
Suppliers:
www.spencersbutchers.com
www.farm-direct.com
www.gameandwild.co.uk
www.ouichef.uk.com
The next supperclub is on April 19, details and tickets coming soon.
© Linda Galloway 2024