Fletcher, Nichola 1951–

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Fletcher, Nichola 1951–

(Nichola Rosemary Fletcher)

PERSONAL: Born 1951, in Glasgow, Scotland; married John Fletcher; children: two daughters. Education: Attended Edinburgh College of Art, including postgraduate courses in jewelry making and silversmithing.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—Reediehill Farm, Auchtermuchty, Fife KY14 7HS, Scotland; fax: 01337 827001. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER: Freelance jewelry designer and maker, 1973–; owner of Reediehill Deer Farm, with husband, John Fletcher, 1973–; partner of Scottish Deer Centre, 1987–90; managing partner of Fletchers of Auchtermuchty, 1987–; director of Scottish Farm Venison Ltd., 1991–97. Food writer and demonstrator; artisan food producer; leads cooking workshops and lectures on cooking; consultant on food product marketing and tourism. Exhibitions: Samples of Fletcher's jewelry and silversmithing work are housed in collections of the Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; Edinburgh Castle; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh; Scottish Crafts Collection, Edinburgh; and Angus Pictish Museum, Angus, Scotland.

MEMBER: Guild of Food Writers, Society of Authors, Food Trust of Scotland (director, 1997–), Scottish Food Group, British Deer Farmers Association (council member, 1991–94).

AWARDS, HONORS: Johnson Matthey Silverware Award, 1972; travel bursary, Royal Society of Arts, 1973; Helen Rose Bequest traveling scholarship for best design student, 1974; Come to Britain Trophy distinction, 1988, for work with Scottish Deer Centre; Queens Award for Export Achievement, 1990, for work with Reediehill Deer Farm; Lifetime Achievement Award, and Scottish Food Achievement Awards, 1994, for work on behalf of Scotland's venison industry; Silver Trophy, Gourmet-Voice World Media, 2004, for Charlemagne's Tablecloth.

WRITINGS:

COOKING

Venison: The Monarch of the Table, N. Fletcher (Auchtermuchty, Scotland), 1983.

Game for All: With a Flavour of Scotland, Gollancz (London, England), 1987.

(Editor and contributor) Perfect Venison, British Deer Farmers Association, 1990.

Contributor to cookbooks, including Wild Boar Recipe Book, edited by Martin Knight, 1991; Creative Butchery, Meat Trades Journal, 1993; Cook with Venison, edited by Jane Garbutt, Hillworth Publications, 1993; The Poultry and Game Buyers Guide, Emap, 1995; The Best of Modern British Cookery, edited by Sarah Freeman, 1995; Simply Smoked, edited by George Dorgan, 1996; and The Best of Breakfasts, edited by Joanna Toye and Michael Joseph, 1997. Food correspondent, Scottish Landowners' Federation journal, 1984–96; contributor to Financial Times Weekend Food and Drink pages and other magazines.

OTHER

Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting, Weidenfeld & Nicholson (London, England), 2004, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Code of Practice for the Sale of Farmed Venison, British Deer Farmers Association, 1990; Deer Farming: A Handbook for the 1990s, British Deer Farmers Association, 1990; and The Fat of the Land (proceedings of 2002 Oxford Symposium), Footwork Press, 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A new book on venison.

SIDELIGHTS: Nichola Fletcher had been creating and writing about specialty foods, particularly the cooking of venison, boar, and other wild game, for over twenty years before she published Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting. This book discusses feasting customs from around the world and throughout history, from the cannibalistic meals of the ancient Aztecs to a blubber-swallowing contest held at a party thrown by the chief of the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia, Canada, in the nineteenth century. Other memorable feasts chronicled by Fletcher include one held in Paris as the city celebrated Christmas while under siege during the Franco-Prussian war. In this case, enterprising chefs butchered and served zoo animals, cats, and rats to create a suitable Christmas repast.

According to Spectator contributor Christopher Bland, however, "the most delicious feasts in this book are those organised and cooked by the author." Among these is a banquet, prepared for a meeting of deer experts from around the world, where every dish, down to the ice cream and liqueur, was made at least in part from venison products. Fletcher also examines the reasons why people feast: to celebrate life passages such as weddings and funerals, to give thanks at harvest-time, or to impress others with lavish displays. "Fletcher serves her culinary history buffet-style," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer; "thematic chapters on meat or fish are followed by palate-cleansing pauses to examine oddities," including a fourteen-course dinner held on horseback on the fourth floor of a New York restaurant in 1903. The resulting book, declared a Kirkus Reviews contributor, is "a smorgasbord of informative and entertaining essays on feasts through the ages."