From Page to Plate: A Shakespeare Feast

Something a bit different this week. I thought - following the suggestion of a friend - that it would be a nice idea to get together a group of my friends who live locally and have been complimentary about my blog, and feed them. Thus, the Shakespeare Feast was designed.

Quite simply, I devised a menu in which I pulled together all my Shakespeare-inspired dishes (plus two new ones which I will write about in my next post), cooked them over two days in the Easter holidays and then invited 11 friends, plus 3 children, to come and partake. We ate, we drank, we talked... and nobody complained about the fact that I hadn't considered the shortfall between the number of chairs in my flat (10) and the number of guests!

A Shakespeare Feast: the menu

MAIN COURSES

Falstaff's Fricassee: "Item a capon...2s 2d,,,Item sack two gallons...5s 8d." (Henry IV Part One)

Henry V's Leek Tart: "the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps." (Henry V)

Pea and Bean 'Pottage': "Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog and thatis the next way to give poor jades the bots." (Henry IV Part One)

Henry V's Leek Tart

DESSERTS

Richmond Maids of Honour: "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale." (Twelfth Night)

Gingerbread: "An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread." (Love's Labour's Lost)

Beatrice's 'Civil' Orange Cake: "The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil ... civil as an orange." (Much Ado About Nothing)