Two British afternoon tea baking workshops I held in Tokyo this week, based on historic recipes. These classes sold out super fast, and though my ego would like to take full credit for that, the truth is more complicated.
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There is a curiosity from cooks in Japan in old forgotten British recipes that celebrate techniques & ingredients from all around the UK. Also, because the Japanese cuisine is built on an appreciation of precision, nuances and details in techniques and ingredients, generally home cooks are not troubled by mild complication in baking or cooking: that’s part of the fun.
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The five British recipes I demonstrated…
Maids of Honour Tarts, from Richard Briggs 1791 “The English Art of Cookery”, using rich rough puff from my book Short & Sweet. Cheekily I used squares of rough puff pressed into round tins, so the corners of the pastry puffed up around the curd filling.
Lemon curd tarts, the curd based on a recipe from 1856, in “The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine”, published by Samuel & Isabella Beeton just prior to “Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management” in 1861. The shortcrust was from my book Short & Sweet.
Flemington Gingerbread, from around the mid 19th century. Flemington was a collier village in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire. I put a fresh lemon icing on it as the cake has a bold treacle & ginger ???? to it.
Marmalade & sherry apple cake, effectively a 20th century WI Cumberland apple cake under the hood, made with Japan’s #Aohata’s English-style marmalade.
An favourite sausage roll of mine from my book Short & Sweet using the Maids of Honour rough puff. In planning I wanted it to have a coarser Cumberland pork sausage filling: but in execution due to the trickiness in buying raw sausage meat in Japan it ended up being made with…wait for it, make sure you’re sitting down…raw pork mince mixed with a purée of cooked hotdogs, thyme and black pepper. Next time I’d just season raw pork mince but hey, we may have invented something.
Got into a long explanations about why “lemon curd”, “almond curd” and “cheese curd” are all curds, why a gingerbread is a cake…the eccentricities of the English language.
