This fittingly titled chapter walks us through the treks to the Near East that gave Agatha a new lease on life—and a new marriage. If her sheer doggedness in recovering from emotional betrayal, or unsurpassed publishing record, is not enough to inspire your respect, then the amount of physical misery she voluntarily endured for the sake of adventure ought to do it.
Accordingly, the discussions of food in the first half of this chapter have largely to do with their uninspiring nature. The ominous beginning is a Turkish lady on a train advising Agatha to take all kind of “remedies” for her so-far meager fertility (Archie’s unwillingness apparently didn’t enter the discussion): “tisanes of leaves, concoctions of herbs, the use of certain kinds of what I thought might be garlic.” Medicine will certainly be needed in this chapter, if not for this reason.
Agatha recalls the “strange meals of cooked food” that you’d find at a train station once you got past the far eastern edge of Europe. “Food on skewers, wrapped in leaves, eggs painted various colours—all sorts of things. The meals became more unpalatable and fuller of hot, greasy, tasteless morsels as we went further East.” She learned to live off “small sweet grapes” as cure for a bad fever en route.
Things were much better when she reached her destination, the venerable Ur of the Chaldeans, which now had a hotel accommodating aspiring British archeologists (probably not in Abraham’s day, though). The hotel restaurant served you “several meals in one; course after course, all bearing a strange resemblance to each other—large lumps of fried meat and rice, hard, little potatoes, tomato omelettes, rather leathery, immense pale cauliflowers, and so on.” She admired the “spices of all kinds” in the local market, but evidently didn’t get to enjoy the taste of them.
It was only a subsequent visit to Ur, once again at the behest of the Woolleys—an archaeology couple of domineering personality—that Agatha met Leonard Woolley’s assistant Max Mallowan, “a thin, dark, young man, and very quiet,” who suffers the unfortunate distinction of being able to do no wrong in the eyes of Katharine Woolley, whose full-time occupation was finding fault with everyone else. Agatha notices the toadying nervous attention to Katharine at table: “[T]here was always someone to offer her more milk with her coffee or butter for her toast, to pass the marmalade, and so on. Why I wondered, were they all so scared of her?” Toast goes on to be a pawn in a wretched social drama that plays out before Agatha’s eyes. Not to worry; she made good use of this experience for Murder in Mesopotamia, whose victim bears a rather uncanny resemblance to Katherine Woolley.
Perhaps this emotional turbulence was why Max was more than happy to take Agatha on a several-day tour of the region—though it does seems he already had his eye on her. Before their first trip was over, he’d become so impressed at Agatha’s sheer hardiness in the face of discomfort that he decided she was just the woman for him. Since she happily spent one night sleeping in a police cell because there was no hotel, and was unashamed to ask Max to escort her to the bathroom, I think we can agree she deserved the honors.
While she doesn’t go into much detail, Agatha does mention how they ate dinner together at the police post, and breakfasted together the next day, and carried fresh bread along with them. Later on she and Max visited Greece, where they spent “a happy day on the beach, bathing in a glorious warm sea. It was on that day that he picked me enormous quantities of yellow marigolds. I made them into a chain and he hung them around my neck, and we had a picnic lunch in the midst of a great sea of yellow marigolds.” Not too many details about the menu, nut you get the sense that, as Agatha is learning to eat with a man again, a man who is equally happy to eat with her, she is slowly repairing the soul-damage done by one who only had unhappy food memories attached to him. After reading about that marigold-laden picnic on Aegean, you know that it won’t be long before Max proposes. Even if Agatha didn’t see it coming.
One other thing to mention from this chapter is how she lists off in the middle of it things she likes and things she doesn’t. Food dislikes: “any kind of drink [i.e. alcohol] except in cooking, marmalade, oysters, lukewarm food… Final and fiercest dislike: the taste and small of hot milk.” (And this from the woman who drinks cream neat!) Food likes: apples and the smell (but not the taste?) of coffee. I’m charmed that the apples she remembered so well from childhood remain among her favorites. And of course, it further seals the suspicion that Agatha’s on-page alter ego is neither Hercule Poirot nor Jane Marple, but apple-addict Ariadne Oliver.
Ode to a Grecian Picnic
Agatha doesn’t say what she and Max at on that marigold-drenched picnic by the sea, but here’s what I’d enjoy, and did enjoy, in their honor. If you want to do the full picnic, prepare the recipes in this order.
Briam
This is a baked layered vegetable dish from Greece. Like most Greek food, it’s served room temperature, not hot. The quantities of veg are flexible, so just use whatever amount you can get easily.
½ c (125 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb (450 g) fresh tomatoes, cored and sliced
½ lb (225 g) potatoes, scrubbed and sliced reasonably thin
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 eggplant, sliced in rounds
1 zucchini, sliced in rounds
1 green pepper, cored and sliced into rings
½ lb (225 g) okra, topped
juice of ½ lemon
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). In a good-sized baking dish or oven-safe frying pan, sprinkle a little of the oil, then layer on half the tomatoes, followed by the potatoes, onions, and garlic. Sprinkle with ½ tsp salt and however much pepper you like. Layer on the eggplant, zucchini, and green pepper. Toss the okra with the lemon and add to the pile. Sprinkle with another ½ tsp salt and more pepper. Top with the rest of the tomato slices. Pour the rest of the olive oil over the dish. Stick in the oven for half an hour, till the top is starting to brown. Then put a cover on top (the pan lid, for instance, or foil if it’s a baking dish) and bake another 60 minutes. Everything should be very soft and collapsed when it’s ready. Let cool to room temperature.
Marinated Olives
mixture of green and black olives
strips of zest and juice from ½ lemon
fresh rosemary needles
black pepper
Mix everything in a small bowl and set aside. Stir it up from time to time as you think of it.
Sesame Rings
Get started on these while the briam is baking.
¾ tsp yeast
½ tsp sugar
1 c (250 mL) water
1 lb (450 g) flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 egg, beaten
a lot of sesame seeds (½ c / 125 mL will probably do the trick)
Mix the yeast, ½ tsp sugar, and just a little of the water (already measured) into a small bowl, stir well, and let sit till active and bubbly. Meanwhile mix together the flour, salt, and 1 Tbsp sugar in a large mixing bowl. When the yeast is ready, pour about two-thirds of it into the flour mixture along with the rest of the water and the olive oil. Stir with a wooden spoon till it comes together. If it’s still very floury and unincorporated, add the remaining water a little at a time. When it looks like most of the flour is lightly dampened, use your hands to bring it together and knead into a ball. You may need to add more flour or water to get it to a pretty dense, firm, easy-to-knead, non-sticky dough. (Bread doughs are so moody, depending on so many factors, that you really have to figure this out from trying it yourself, not from precise measurements.) Knead for two or three minutes, then break into six more or less equally sized pieces. Knead and roll each one into a neat bowl, pinch the edges together, and place pinched-side down back in the mixing bowl. Cover with plastic and let sit till doubled in size.
When the briam is done, set the oven for 400°F (200°C). take each piece of dough, roll into a snake, and pinch the edges to make an oblong loop. Set on a baking tray (greased or lined with parchment paper). Paint with the beaten egg, then carefully lift and press eggy-side down into a plate filled with sesame seeds. Do this to all six, then press however many sesame seeds are left to blank spots on your rings. Place directly in the oven and bake 10–15 minutes till puffed and golden.
Decorated Feta
block of feta cheese
honey
oregano
Set the feta on a plate, drizzle with a little honey, and sprinkle with oregano.
To enjoy your picnic, serve everything the second the sesame rings come out of the oven, preferably in the company of your beloved. If neither retsina nor gutsy red wine is your thing, wash it all down with a sherry glassful of neat cream.