3 Review(s)

Corfu Banquet celebrates the tastes, smells and colours of an island where the cooking is seasonal and the flowers play changes on the theme of a year-round spring. An island where life follows the sea; from an icy turquoise in March, through autumn's olive darkness when mourga, (the mush of discarded olive skins from the village press) clouds the water to a claret wine, as winter sets in. A memoir in the rhythm of the five seasons of Corfu, the story tells of the house of Rovinia, built in the sixties by Emma Tennant's parents and of Maria, the 'spirit of the house', her knowledge and wisdom. Corfu Banquet entwines recipes and original photographs with fond recollections in prose. This is a sensuous experience, like pinching the basil that grows in great pots at the back door or tasting the pale pink of the homemade fragole ice cream.