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"Why I love food history"

by Gillian, age lots-and-lots

I love food history because of revolving dining rooms in Nero's Rome and meat pies in Medieval London and really odd menus almost everywhere. What I most love right now, though, is writers and their relationship to food.

I still don't have time to start up a new blog to replace my food history blog (and the silence on the internet about the sudden demise of 451Press blogs is curiously interesting), but I have my series on writers and their food and I'm going to post it here, once a week, starting next week. If anyone who was part of the first series would like me to repost (without pictures, alas, but otherwise unchanged) then I'm happy to. If anyone who hasn't jumped on board would like to, then just email me.

Now I must go. I hear haunting foodie words in the back of my head. They call me! "Coffee, coffee, coffee," they beckon.

Writing fictional battles

World-building is still on my mind. This is - quite obviously - because I'm halfway through my six weeks teaching it. It's also because the world is sympathetic to me and is spawning bunches of suitable material to talk about in class. I've already printed out an article to take in next Sunday, but we won't use it in detail. This is because I'm really not qualified to talk about the actual fighting aspect of war. I can teach the importance of supply lines and my friends have taught me ways of keeping armour from rusting and I know how to carry weaponry into war (mostly) but the actual battle bit is something I've never found inspiring.

I'm a Medievalist who writes fantasy novels and I don't enjoy writing or reading battle scenes? I know, it's so sad that I'm a person and not a stereotype. I might have to mend my ways.

Anyhow, the article I'm going to make my students look at is an excellent one for showing some key things a deviser-of-battles ought to look at. I have a list of perfect books, too, but this article is easier on the eye, being short.

Because it's an argument about the size of the French army at Agincourt, it talks about change over time and it discusses how non-combatants are seen by observers as well as the role some of them play in battle. The 'observer' bit is important, because many battles are written about as if seen rather than experienced. In fact, it's a good checklist of some of the key things a writer needs to keep in mind for a late Medieval style battle in Western Europe or its fantasy/alternate history equivalent. Since the late Middle Ages are where a lot of our notions come from for creating a good battle for fantasy novels (shiny armour, trained horses, bows, arrows, noble lords, missing heirs, that sort of thing) this is a very handy article for writers who are attached to a particular variety of heroic fantasy.

That's not the kind of novel I write. But I like reading it when it's well done, and the Lone Warrior riding into battle wearing full 15th century armour, with no-one to dress him or help him off the field when he's injured and with no knowledge of the battle or plans or anything and yet the writer obviously expects him to save the day - that mostly causes me to get a cuppa and hope the scene will be over very quickly.

There are fewer of these scenes around than there used to be. Still, though, it's handy to be able to tell people to "read this before you design your battle."

I cheat. I do not design battles from scratch. I avoid writing about them all if I can, because, truly, if your heart isn't in something it tends to show to the reader. Once I've done the research, my heart is a little more in it. So, what do I do when I design a battle (since obviously it sometimes has to happen, and did, in fact, for Illuminations) - I do much research into a given historical battle that has the right outcomes and I rename it and its combatants. One particular battle. Only one. If I can, I walk the battlefield. If I can't, I read primary and secondary sources that analyse it to death. In fact, I do that anyway.

So far, no-one has guessed which battle I used in Illuminations, so my brand of cheating works. Unless all my readers went for cuppas at that point. I would understand it if they did.

I don't use the same brand of cheating at all when I write about hand-to-hand fighting. Mostly I find a way round it, but I have been known to ask experts when such things are unavoidable.

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Never try to make fiddly food during a thunderstorm. The results might taste good, but they aren't precisely graceful and elegant.

I was taking mini-Vietnamese rolls to a dancething tomorrow morning. I'm bringing food and G and L are bringing alcohol and we're all bringing hats (note to self - choose a hat that will stay on while dancing). I had a really yummy filling all nice and chilled. All I had to do was fill the skins. And fold them.

Have I ever said that my coordination fails in exciting ways when there is interesting weather? Well, it does. And my rolls failed in fascinating ways. I ate the few I made for late supper, to destroy the evidence of failure. They tasted rather yummy, but they looked... bizarre.

I've put the mixture back in the fridge and will eat it for dinner tomorrow and then lunch on Wednesday and then dinner on Thursday... unless someone helps me eat it. It's a really nice mixture and I have heaps and heaps of rice wrappers just waiting to be filled. I can create dipping sauces to die for. Trouble is, I can't fill those wrappers.

I started putting on some rice, thinking that nori maki is the obvious lazy alternative. But I wimped out. I shall wake up a half hour early tomorrow and do a plate of water biscuits with sour cream and chutney and a small spray of coconut. If it can work for the chutney makers at Floriade, it can work for me, even in stormy weather and half asleep. If the weather is warm again, I can make some salep at the same time, since I have a packet mix. Or I could give up and do the old-fashioned thing and bake, now.

I wonder which alternative needs least co-ordination?