Professor Butter Beard and John Martin’s “Macbeth”
“One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth. Shakespeare always makes me ravenous.” – Agatha Christie
I’m currently craving the soulful palette of a Highlands spring. I daydream of mornings waking with the bedroom window slightly open allowing a whisper of mist to enter and slightly mask the sunrise. Stumbling into my wellies and sweater and stepping into the damp cloud as I begin my hike with Nellie to the Loch. Colors appear. Patches of proud daffodils, mounds of vibrant purple heather and tall waving Scottish bluebells. Nellie smiles from floppy ear to floppy ear as she attempts to flirt with the Highland cattle calves and the cotton ball lambs. The shimmering mirror of the Loch appears revealing the violet mountains, capped with the last crowns of winter snow, emerging from their foggy curtain and calling the day to break. A Scottish spring has sprung.
The artist John Martin understood that Scottish palette, but within a darker context than my morning stroll. According to his biographers, Martin was born in July of 1789, in a one-room cottage, at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham in Northumberland, the fourth son of Fenwick Martin, a one-time fencing master. He was apprenticed early by his father to a coachbuilder in Newcastle upon Tyne to learn heraldic painting, but owing to a dispute over wages, the arrangements were cancelled, and he was placed instead under Boniface Musso, an Italian artist, father of the enamel painter Charles Muss. With his new master, Martin moved from Newcastle to London in 1806, where he married at the age of nineteen, and supported himself by giving drawing lessons, and by painting in watercolors on china and glass. As his talent and popularity increased, he began to be celebrated for his typically vast and melodramatic paintings of religious subjects and fantastic compositions, populated with minute figures placed in imposing storytelling landscapes.
Martin painted “Macbeth” in the spring of 1820. It depicts one of the earliest scenes in Shakespeare’s telling, with the three weird witches disappearing in a swirl of mist and lightning bolts after meeting with Macbeth and Banquo on the glowing heath. Macbeth and Banquo are King Duncan of Scotland’s generals, who have just defeated the allied armies of Norway and Ireland. The foretelling witches address Macbeth as “Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor (which he is not), and King hereafter.” The enchantresses are more mysterious in their pronouncements for Banquo’s future before dissolving into the morning mist leaving the stunned generals to ponder their allusive, and ultimately deadly prospects.
In 1786, Alderman John Boydell (later Lord Mayor of London) established his commercial Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall to promote British history painting through the medium of Shakespearian illustration. Boydell’s gallery commissioned Martin in 1819 to capture the essence of Macbeth’s journey on a grand scale. The original painting, now unfortunately lost, measured an impressive 68 by 90 inches. The National Gallery of Scotland, where Martin’s reduced version of painting hangs today, writes: “The theatricality of Martin’s composition is of a cosmic order in which the turbulent skies and exaggerated forms of the mountainous landscape become an extended metaphor for the impending cataclysm which will engulf the Scottish nation.”
Now this moment is when Agatha and I speak the same language. After following Macbeth like King Hamlet’s ghost along his doomed and bloody journey, I am ravenous for a sweet reminder of the Scottish heath on a spring morning. Pitcaithly Bannocks are specialty shortbreads baked in Scotland for festive occasions, like the spring solstice. It is believed they were first baked in Pitcaithly Wells, a hamlet in the Perth and Kinross area of Scotland, famed for its mineral water. A handwritten recipe written in 1799 by Margaret Stewart can be read in the archives of the National Library of Scotland. Her embellishments of caraway, almonds and orange zest inspired my interpretation baked with the addition of home-made rice flour to lighten the gluten and increase the crumble. Go ahead and devour Shakespeare’s bloody theatrics and then transport yourself to a spring sunrise on the Loch with a bite of butter, sugar and morning mist.
Detail of “Macbeth,” Macbeth, Banquo and the Weird Witches.
Pitcaithly Bannock (Scottish Celebration Shortbreads)
Makes 32 pieces
12 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
Zest of one large orange (or two clementines)
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup raw rice (I prefer basmati)
½ tsp fine sea salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
¾ cup sliced almonds
¼ cup confectionary’s sugar
1) Line two 8”x8” cake pans with parchment. I prefer to use two pieces per pan (see photograph). Heat your oven to 300 degrees.
2) In a cast iron pan, first toast the caraway seeds until just starting to become fragrant and “pop.” Brush the seeds onto a sheet of parchment and then toast the almond slices in the hot pan until just starting to brown, shaking the pan constantly. Brush the almond slices onto the same parchment sheet to cool with the seeds.
3) In a food processor, pulse the granulated sugar with the orange zest roughly five times. This will blend the zest and the sugar and grind the sugar just a bit more fine to imitate “castor” sugar.
4) In a standing mixer, cream together the butter and the zested sugar on a medium speed for about five minutes until fully smooth.
5) While the butter/sugar is creaming, measure the flour and salt into a medium bowl. Grind the rice in a spice grinder until it becomes a powder and add to the flour/salt mixture. Fill a small plastic bag with the cooled almonds and caraway seeds, seal the bag, and then crush the nuts and seeds together with your hands. Add the nut/seed mix to the flour mixture. Whisk all the dry ingredients together.
6) With the mixer on low, add the dry mix to the creamed butter until it comes together evenly. Divide the dough in half and press each half into the 8x8 pans. Using a pastry comb or a fork, create ridges on the top of the dough before baking. These ridges will give the final dusting of sugar lovely crevasses to fill.
7) Bake the shortbreads for 40-45 minutes until evenly golden. Remove the pans from the oven and immediately dust the tops of the shortbreads with confectionary sugar using a sifter. Let the shortbreads cool on a rack in the pan for ten minutes, cut into desired shapes (16 squares per pan) and then let the cookies fully cool in the pan before removing them to serve.
