Weekend Cooking: The Writers Banquet series

Melbourne is one of only a few UNESCO Cities of Literature (with the others being Dublin, Iowa City and Edinburgh). One of the initiatives that led to that designation was the establishment of The Wheeler Centre which is "a centre dedicated to the discussion and practice of writing and ideas" and as such there are spaces for writers to work, workshops etc, and there is a full program of events for those of us who are readers....which is where I come in!

Recently there have been a series of three free events that were held in conjunction with The Book Show on Radio National where authors come and talk about various food related topics and then they were played on the radio a few days later and are still available for download on the website.

I was lucky enough to go to the first of these events. I was also meant to go to the third one but circumstances conspired against me.I did however think that this might be topic that might be of interest for Weekend Cooking participants. Each of the podcasts is just under an hour in length and you can listen to them by clicking on the link below each summary.

The first event was The Writers Banquet: In the Writer's Kitchen and featured Toni Jordan, Morris Gleitzman and Andrea Goldsmith talked about the role of food, of food memories in the life of the writer. Other questions include comparing the writing process to the cooking process, about how fiction nourishes the reader, the danger of putting recipes that you haven't actually made in your book, the love of cheese and more.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3205425.htm

The second event was The Writers Banquet: Literary Feasts where the discussion was about some of the famous scenes revolving around food in literature. The most obvious example to my mind is the decaying wedding cake of Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. This is the podcast where I heard about Kafka's Soup which I posted about in last week's Weekend Cooking post. The guests include crime writer Shane Moloney and Carmel Bird and there were nods to The Christmas Carol by Charles Dicken, the feast in The Leopard and more.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3238876.htm

The final event was The Writers Banquet: A Culinary Travel Adventure which featured three of Australia's well known chefs - Frank Camorra who is the owner of the Movida chain of Spanish restaurants (I posted about eating at Movida Aqui here), Stephanie Alexander and Elizabeth Chong. They talk about leading culinary tours, Elizabeth Chong talks about the meaning of rice to Chinese people, their travel experiences etc.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3251350.htm

 Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.