What to feed your characters, by Elizabeth Kay

 C.S.Lewis said that food was really important in a children’s book, as important as sex in an adult novel. It’s also important in adult novels, as it defines your character in all sorts of ways. Are they vegetarian? Vegan? Paleo? Fruitarian? Do they have allergies, intolerances, real dislikes? Do the dislikes stem from any particular incident in their childhood? The possibilities are endless; they can be very funny, really tragic, and the plot can turn on a mushroom…

 “We know you did it, Denise,” said Inspector Mortlake, checking that the tape recorder was working properly. DC Amy Parry folded her hands primly in her lap, and tried to look as though she were just as certain.

            “I don’t think you do,” said Denise.

            “Your sister died from…” Mortlake hesitated. “Mycetismus.”

            “Sounds like an infection transmitted by mice.”

            “It’s mushroom poisoning, Denise. By…” He glanced at his notes again. “Amanita phalloides. The Death Cap.”

            “She said she had a stomach upset.”

            “Yes,” said Mortlake drily, “you could say that. You invited her round to dinner, and served mushroom risotto.”

            “A Cordon Bleu recipe,” said Denise. “Ceps, chanterelles, morels… It’s amazing what you can buy online these days. You found the receipt. I ate some myself.”

            “You added one of your own to her plate after you’d served up your own dinner.”

            “You can’t prove it,” said Denise, crossing legs encased in sheer black stockings.

 This was the beginning of a short story of mine that was published in Magnet Magazine, a few years ago. Tradition has it that the Emperor Claudius was murdered with mushrooms. Feeding someone something to which they’re extremely allergic can be equally effective – shellfish, for instance. Anaphylactic shock is very quick. But it’s not just as an instrument of murder that food is important. I apologise for re-posting something that appeared on this site five years ago, but it’s good fun and illustrated this character’s personality. Grimspite is a sinistrom (devil-hyena) who appears in all three books of the Divide Trilogy. Having acquired free will by accident, he renounces extreme violence and decides to compile a cookery book.

 Grimspite’s favourite recipe

 Cluck-bird with pomegranate and walnut sauce

    Ingredients:

• 1 cluck-bird
• 1 onion
• 3 handfuls of smashed up walnuts
• The juice of 4 pomegranates
• Half an eggshell of oil
• A quarter gourd of water
• 1 clove of garlic
• Salt, pepper

First, disembowel your cluck-bird, and hack it into four pieces. Fry the pieces, then take them out of the pan. Slash the onion into little bits (if you don’t have claws, use a knife) and fry them as well. Stir in the smashed-up walnuts, and, after the amount of time it takes to have a good scratch, add the pomegranate juice, water, crushed garlic, salt and pepper. Put the pieces of cluck-bird back in, and cook until done.

Grimspite's second favourite recipe

Quick Demonised Offal

Ingredients:

• 2 grunt-beast kidneys
• 2 rashers of grunt-beast bacon
• ½ onion
• tablespoon of Dijon mustard
• tablespoon red wine
• dribble of oil

Chop up the onion (use your fangs or a knife, depending on your hygiene requirements) and fry it in the oil. Slash the kidneys into small lumps, and do the same with the bacon. Add to the onion, and fry until no longer bleeding. Add the mustard and the wine, stir well, leave it for enough time to have a roll in your compost heap, and then serve with toast.

 I do tend to use past experiences in my writing, and this extract from Beware of Men with Moustaches was based very strongly on a hotel in Lviv, Ukraine. The country in which the book is set is fictional, but it’s an amalgam of all the Eastern European countries I have visited.

 The following morning they all met up for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which appeared to have been airlifted from a remote region of Japan. Julie suspected that the waiter came from a long-lived family of Tartar extraction, forced to work because he wasn’t entitled to a pension. The food, however, was magnificent – caviar, smoked salmon, five different kinds of cold meat, bread, cheese, and extraordinarily good coffee.

“There’s no marmalade, though,” said Steve. “How can you feel that you’ve had a proper breakfast without marmalade? 

Shopping for food can be equally informative, and describe the setting in ways that can ve very effective. This is an extract from a bit later on…

 They decided to go out and explore, and almost at once Julie felt as though she were stepping back in time. There didn’t seem to be any department stores or supermarkets, just individual shops with faded advertisements for Athlete’s Foot Powder in the windows. Most of them appeared to be shoe shops or chemists. Every so often they would come across a statue of a man in a fur hat, killing something.

“Every single grocery store sells vodka,” said Ferris, peering through a shop window.

They went inside. The fish counter sold caviar by the dollop, out of plastic tubs.

“Good grief,” said Steve. “Vodka costs less than chocolate.”

Ferris grinned. “The champagne’s even cheaper.”

Loaded with alcohol they progressed to a bookshop, where Ferris got his dictionary, and from there to the market. There was a lot of beetroot, and some impossibly large cabbages. Stalls selling army memorabilia and ammunition nestled next to ones selling make-up; cages of chicks and ducklings were stacked next to bunches of flowers.

They found a self-service restaurant for lunch, where they could point to what they wanted. What they got wasn’t always what they expected, but the cost of everything was so low that they just stopped worrying about it, and ordered anything that took their fancy.

The cakes were divine. There was a strong similarity between shoe design and cake decoration; it was easy to believe that people switched from one profession to another, taking their themes with them as they went. The barnacle and seaweed motif was equally at home in either leather or marzipan.

 Even if food doesn’t feature prominently in your book, consider including it as it stirs memories of taste and smell, and makes scenes more memorable as a consequence.