Dear readers

Please note that I have moved my blog to a new site.  It can now be found at http://frompagetoplate.com/

All being well all new posts should continue to be emailed out to you and will direct you to the new site.

Best wishes

Becky

The Seductive Power of Strawberries

D'Urberville began gathering specimens of the fruit for her, handing them back to her as he stooped; and, presently, selecting a specially fine product of the 'British Queen' variety, he stood up and held it by the stem to her mouth.
'No - no!' she said quickly, putting her fingers between his hand and her lips.  'I would rather take it in my own hand.'
'Nonsense!' he insisted; and in a slight distress she parted her lips and took it in.  

  (Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles)

In my last post I wrote about literary links between food and seduction, ending with Alec d'Urberville's seduction of Tess through strawberries.  Whilst strawberries on their own - provided they have been grown naturally in plenty of sunshine - can be beautifully sweet and delicious, needing no other accompaniment, I wanted to find a recipe that would present them in their full glory and have a meaningful relationship with Hardy's novel.

Food and Seduction

Food and sex have always been linked: from romantic meals to the alleged aphrodisiac qualities of certain foods - according to an article in The Independent these include asparagus, celery and pomegranate: see here  

Food and Country Life

There was a great stir in the milk-house just after breakfast.  The churn revolved as usual, but the butter would not come.  Whenever this happened the dairy was paralyzed.   Squish, squash, echoed the milk in the great cylinder, but never arose the sound they waited for.

(Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

The Take-Away in Literature

It was a nice little dinner ...being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house 

(Great Expectations, Charles Dickens)

Until I visited Pompeii - during a holiday on the Amalfi coast a few years ago - I had always assumed take-aways were a recent invention.  But in the ancient Italian city devastated by the  volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD the streets were lined with thermopolia, service counters opening onto the street where people could buy food to take away.  There were more than 200 of these in Pompeii, and the remains of houses show few traces of kitchen and dining areas, suggesting that cooking at home was unusual.