Eatdrink #76 March/April 2019

eatdrink: The Local Food & Drink Magazine
tea with pear). Walsh suggests six other tea
party ideas with appropriate menus, such
as Aslan’s Feast featuring recipes specific to
The Chronicles of Narnia or a Murder Most
Delicious tea party with recipes based on
Sherlock Holmes stories and Agatha Christie
mysteries, including Blood Orange Scones and
London Fog Lattes.
Throughout the book, Walsh provides
helpful tips she has stumbled upon in her
recipe testing. For instance, when preparing
Swiss roll type sandwiches, using oatmeal or
potato bread allows for easier rolling because
these have a higher moisture content and are
less likely to dry out. When she gets into candy
making with Peppermint Humbugs, to pay
tribute to the word used by the curmudgeonly
Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, she suggests
coating your gloved hands and kitchen scissors
March/April 2019 | 61
with cooking spray to make it easier to work
with the hot, sticky, melted sugar.
As Sara Letourneau writes in the book’s
introduction: “If literature is meant to reflect
life, then why not use food, a part of our
everyday lives, to make that reflection truly
believable?” By drawing on her knowledge of
literature and inserting quotes alongside her
recipes, Walsh has invented tea party gems
in her own kitchen and passed them on to
all book lovers through A Literary Tea Party,
proving that dishes inspired by fiction can
become reality, because food is real, even in
make-believe worlds.
DARIN COOK is a freelance writer from Chatham who
keeps himself well-read and well-fed by visiting the
bookstores and restaurants of London.
The Raven Cocktail
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven”
3 blackberries
3–5 mint leaves (plus 2 extra sprigs for garnish)
1 ½ oz white rum
½ cup pomegranate juice, chilled
Makes 1 cocktail
Use a muddler to crush the blackberries and 3–5 mint
leaves in the bottom of a cocktail shaker (I used 3 mint
leaves).
Pour in the rum and pomegranate juice. Secure the lid
onto the shaker and shake to combine.
Pour into a wine glass. Strain out the berry pulp and
leaves or, if you prefer, leave them in. I like the visual
effect and extra flavour they add, so I leave them in.
Top with a sprig of mint and serve to a gloomy feathered
friend.
Recipe excerpted from Alison’s Wonderland
Recipes: Recipes Inspired by Classic Literature
(wonderlandrecipes.com) by Alison Walsh.
All rights reserved.