Consider the shopping list: 1100 chickens, 900 lambs, 2600 sheep, almost 8000kg of honey and 18,000 eggs. What a swell party that must have been. And the occasion? To celebrate the circumcision of a prince sometime during the era of the Ottoman Empire. The catering details, recorded by a mid-16th-century writer, are revived by William Sitwell in his latest literary effort, which also does a wonderful PR job for the historically disparaged civilisation by looking at its food rather than its political ideology.
The latter may have a way of gripping the psyche, he writes, but “food is different. If things taste good, if drinks do more than just quench thirst, then they find a way of reaching the surface, coming up for air, seeing the light.” And we have plenty in the way of modern-day feasting – falafel, hummus, shared plates and more – to thank “this beast of an ancient culture” for shining a light upon our own dining tables.
Sitwell – author, travel writer, food writer, restaurant critic, MasterChef UK judge and broadcaster – is bringing his prodigious wisdom to the Auckland Writers Festival next month. It is impossible to ignore what he also brings: his genealogy.
He is the great-nephew of British poet, critic (and exotically provocative socialite) Dame Edith Sitwell and of author Sir
