Charlemagne's Tablecloth - A Piquant History of Feasting
by Nichola Fletcher
Orion Phoenix, $135
Nichola Fletcher farms deer and actively promotes venison and other game meat. She's also a member of the Guild of Food Writers, and Charlemagne's Tablecloth was on this year's shortlist for the guild's Food Book of the Year (it went to Matthew Fort's Eating Up Italy). Venison is a big meat that befits a book about feasting. However, 'the Feast of St Hubert: hunting, and a nine-course venison feast' may be too virile for the vegetarian, who can take sanctuary in 'Cha-Kaiseki: a vegan feast at the Japanese tea ceremony'. Although the book is mainly about Europe, Fletcher doesn't neglect China, where the banquet has flourished since 200BC. 'Here is a nation which has evolved a way of feasting that wastes nothing,' she says, and quotes Lin Yutang saying of his countrymen: 'If there is anything they are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food.' A 32-course banquet in Hong Kong in 1957 began with a dish made with 200 ducks' tongues. A British diplomat said it had 'particularised appeal'.
