Media Consumption
Vegan Chickpea Kedgeree, for ‘Downton Abbey’
A delicious vegan take on a Victorian classic
The UK churns out beautifully-made period pieces with nimble regularity, but not since a reticent Colin Firth staggered from a lake clad in clinging white linen in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice had a show enjoyed such cultural impact as Downton Abbey. Ten years on from its celebrated debut, I finally jumped on the bandwagon, consuming the show with fervent vigor. Yes, it’s very silly, skittishly in love with the idea of noblesse oblige, and not an awful lot happens — but what a serotonin-boosting pleasure to watch that glorious mildness unfold!
Downton Abbey is an exquisitely-wrapped gift: what’s inside is almost irrelevant because the joy is in its presentation. The small becomes enormous and the enormous is tiny: characters splutter at an incorrect tie worn to dinner, yet instinctively exercise discretion when a Turkish diplomat is found dead in the bed of the estate’s eldest daughter.
Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess carries herself like a vexed marmoset, perpetually ready to cock her head slightly and murmur the kind of observation only someone deeply obscured from regular society can invoke. (“What is a weekend?”) The Crawley sisters — Mary, Edith and Sybil — are on the…
