 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Lilla's Feast
By Frances Osborne
Doubleday $32.95
 This deeply moving biography of the author's great-grandmother, Lilla Eckford, spans most of the 20th century's major conflicts, from the Boxer Rebellion to the victory of the Chinese communists with World Wars 1 and 2 casting predictably long shadows.
The second-born (in 1842) of identical twins, Lilla grew up in the northern Chinese city of Chefoo when the foreign powers, including Japan, enjoyed special trading privileges in the coastal Treaty Ports.
As the title suggests, food plays a central role in this book, with the twin's mother teaching them to 'ease crabmeat from its shell, flip the bones out of a fish, wolf watery noodles without spilling a drop, eat hot, spicy foods without letting their eyes water.'
Sadly, another agenda was at play, for their father walked to the garden shed with a pistol and blew his brains out. So began the unsettled life that led Lilla on a complicated, ever-shifting trail through the British empire in Asia, with her passion for food often being the high-water mark.
In 1903, Lilla wintered in a snowbound cottage in Kashmir with her first husband Ernie Howell, later lost when his ship was torpedoed by Germans, and their young son Arthur.
She delighted in 'churning out steaming dish after steaming dish of poultry and game... Stuffing long-necked wild duck with sage and onions... Jugging hare, steaming it in a sealed earthenware dish for hours on end.'
In 1919 she arrived in Iraq, betrothed to a dashing Lt-Col who died before the wedding. Back in Chefoo the glamorous Lilla married Ernest Casey, a wealthy merchant, entertaining in fine style yet running her own business, determined never to be dependent on a man again.
When Japanese forces swept through China in the 1930s the Europeans were stripped of their property, then imprisoned in camps where conditions were dreadful.
During this time she used a clunky manual typewriter to write a recipe book featuring full-course meals from many cultures, including Japan. The manuscript takes pride of place in a London museum, with several recipes reproduced here.
'It was as though, by writing down the recipes, or even just the words - chocolate, sugar, tomatoes, lamb - Lilla gave them a life of their own inside the camp... from meat to game to Chinese dishes to savouries to ice creams, Lilla recreated in her tiny grey cell an entire universe of the good old days.'
The book would remain hidden until not long before her death at age 100.
- Books reviewed are available at Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore.
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