The first of three final meals, a part of Kawther Luay's project The Gathering Table.
The Gathering Table: in three acts
Act 1: Milk Sunday 14th May, 5-7.30pm, Tap o’ Noth Farm, Rhynie, AB54 4HH
Act 2: Grain Sunday 4th June, 3-5.30pm, ‘Old Smiddy’ (Cabrach Trust), Inverharroch, Lower Cabrach. AB54 4EU
Act 3: Clay Sunday 2nd July, 1-4pm, Greenmyres Eco Bothy
​Over the past twelve months, chef Kawther Luay has been in residence at Deveron Projects, developing a project called The Gathering Table. Initially setting out to explore local materials and ingredients around Huntly through foraging, cooking, crafting and eating, the project has made connections and fostered collaborations with people, species and cultures (human and more-than-human*), to explore the politics of food and hospitality.
From practical workshops and regular foraging walks, to experimental meals that play with guests’ expectations, the collaborations nurtured by The Gathering Table have unpicked traditional power dynamics between the artist and their audience, the chef and their ingredients, the forager and the plants they have come to know. In performing these multiple roles throughout the project, Kawther has created the conditions for active collaboration and agency, enabling the audience to engage as host, and the ingredients to transform and tell their stories of how they came to be known (or hidden) here in Huntly.
To culminate the project, Kawther, with her human and more-than-human collaborators, devised a story in three acts, to play out across the final three months of her residency. Each act takes the form of a meal, in which cultured, curdled, and fermented characters will collide at different points in their existence, transformed through time, technique and the elements. The acts will be performed close to the characters’ respective homes – the fields in which barley is grown to the riverbed where clay is formed.
Central to the meals, a collaboration with artist Fionn Duffy has created a series of functional ceramics from River Bogie clay, including a cheese mould, yoghurt pot, butter churn and dairy bowl. The form of each object draws from Fionn and Kawther’s initial research into food histories in the area, including at Rhynie and in the Cabrach. The ceramics will be used in the preparation, serving and preservation of each meal, as the hosts of new food cultures (human, microbial, bacterial, fungal) and underpinning the transformation that will take place through each act.
*more-than-human is an idea that recognises that the non-human world has its own capacities and powers, beyond and including those of the human world.
Act 1: Milk
Act 1 weaved together Scottish folklore, local food histories and new writing by Fionn Duffy. Taking form as a communal, outdoor meal on an agro-forestry farm under Tap O'Noth hill, Rhynie, the first meal established milk as a central character and connector for the Gathering Tables’ three acts.
Entering the story, a cloud of ‘dream-cheese’ (a yoghurt based strained cheese) formed the centerpiece for the meal, dripping into shankleesh* and kashk** whilst we were eating. In the Celtic myth of the Dream Makers, cheese curds represent dreams, held up to the sky and offered to birds to lift away. Together, we will explore and respond to this story, while drying, coating and marinating the cheese in oil. The stories and words we share will be preserved, through the process of cheesemaking, for Act 2 (Grain).
Kawther prepared the meal, using ceramic vessels made by Fionn from local clay. The ceramics lend from functional household items, previously found in most crofting kitchens. Exploring the elemental practices related to domestic milk production, a butter urn, cheese press, and perpetual yoghurt pot supported the sharing and celebration of local food cultures (human, microbial, fungal, bacterial) across all three meals.
*Shankleesh is a type of Levantine cheese made from strained and curdled yoghurt.
**Kashk is typically an Iranian cheese made from curdled yoghurt that is dried and fermented under the sun.
**Kashk is typically an Iranian cheese made from curdled yoghurt that is dried and fermented under the sun.
About the project
This event is a part of The Gathering Table, a project with chef and artist Kawther Luay. The project explores foraging, food and craft through a lens of care and hospitality, with Kawther leading public foraging walks, meals, reopening the Barter Shop and inviting many other practitioners to share their skills and knowledge.
This event is a part of The Gathering Table, a project with chef and artist Kawther Luay. The project explores foraging, food and craft through a lens of care and hospitality, with Kawther leading public foraging walks, meals, reopening the Barter Shop and inviting many other practitioners to share their skills and knowledge.
