As part of the activities and preparations for our next online course – Fast and Feast: A Taste of Easter Past – Professor Giles Gasper will be giving a talk as part of the Durham Inspired Live in Lockdown series on March 17th at 18.00 UK time (GMT). This series has been running all the way through lockdown and reaches out not only to Durham alumni and friends but to the wider public. Durham is the third oldest university in England (the claims of UCL notwithstanding!) and a wonderful place to study, teach, and learn. And, especially for anyone interested in medieval culture it is a particularly special place, nestled as we are underneath the romanesque Cathedral.
Giles will be talking about medieval Easter customs across the whole period, the importance of the festival within the, largely, Christian medieval Europe, and the connections with food culture. He’ll also talk about about the experience of working with Andy and the Blackfriars chefs on medieval recipes. The collaboration builds better understandings of the culinary combinations and different insights into how and why the ingredients work. Translation lies at the centre of the exercise, from the medieval languages to modern English (in our case), but then from a medieval to a modern recipe. It’s an exercise that takes a lot of time and thought – but has distinctive, and delicious, results.
eatmedieval 