Take a Dish of Tea

Stoneware glazed bowl; made 1100-1299; Jiangxi, China

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An early reference to a 'dish of tea' appears in William Congreve's 1694 comic play 'Double Dealer' when Lady Touchwood invites Sir Paul Plyant to "drink a dish of tea to settle our heads".  The scandalous aristocrat Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in a letter in 1718 of visiting Greece and imagining how agreeable it would have been "when, after drinking a dish of tea with Sapho, I might have gone the same evening to visit the temple of Homer in Chios ...".  Then, in William Makepeace Thackeray's satire on early 19th century Britain, 'Vanity Fair', the Clapp family was still able, despite straightened circumstances, to "give a friend a dish of tea".

Dish (noun): "A shallow,  flat-bottomed container for cooking or serving food"

Oxford English Dictionary

Most ceramic collections refer to these as 'bowls'  or 'tea bowls' .  So, why the literary references to 'a dish' rather than a bowl?  Could it be that using the word 'dish' instead of 'bowl' was highlighting a British affectation?  But, enough of this.  The star of this piece is a wonderful Chinese tea bowl and the term hare's fur is so beautifully descriptive of the glaze.

Bowl (noun): "A round, deep dish or basin used for food or liquid"

Oxford English Dictionary

Our taste for tea came from China where the Camellia sinensis was first grown and the expertise to turn it into a delicious drink/food was born.  Tea was served in a handleless vessel, a custom which crossed borders along with the appreciation of tea drinking, and later the plant itself.  The handled cup we know today was being made in Britain by 1740, almost a decade after tea first arrived here.  Cups were more expensive to make and more difficult to transport to markets as they didn't stack so neatly, but it seems 'delicate' ladies fingers had to be protected from the heat of the bowl.

The Chinese had, by this time, been making tea for millennia.  By the 10th century, tea drinking tastes there changed from leaf tea to powdered green tea which continued for four centuries before there was a return to steeped leaf tea.  Drinking a steeped leaf tea from a green bowl was considered elegant and tasteful but a frothy whipped powdered green tea looked much more appealing when served in a brown or black bowl.  So began the manufacture of dark glazed bowls in the southern provinces of Fujian and Jiangxi in10th century China.  Manipulation of the glazing, firing and cooling processes resulted in effects including tortoiseshell, oil spot and hare's fur glazes.  The 'hare's fur' tea bowl, above, is in the possession of the V&A Museum in London.  Three flying Phoenixes further decorate the bowl.  These were created using the 'resist' method which was a speciality of Jizhou potters.  Paper silhouettes were applied between a dark brown first glaze and a second lighter toned one, the paper burned away in the kiln leaving outline impressions on the bowl.

With the exception of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who seemed to be serious in her pretensions - Her 'Turkish Embassy Letters' were published only after her death as she believed "a person of quality should never turn author"- the examples of the use of 'dish' I've mentioned are taken from satirical writing.  So, 'bowl' it is.  Despite the invention of the handled 'cup', some of us retain a fondness for ignoring the handle and enclosing the vessel in our hands.  Just to complicate things further we term it "cupping".  You've got to envy the man or woman who got to 'cup' this hare's fur bowl in their hands.

Tea-poached prunes & Buttermilk pudding

Here is a simple recipe for tea-poached prunes.  They're good served with double cream but they go well with a buttermilk pudding so I've given you a recipe for that too.  

Tea-poached Prunes (Adapted from Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters)

250ml (10 fl oz) water
1 tablespoon loose black tea (Earl Grey works well)
140g (5 oz) pitted prunes
45g (1½ oz) caster sugar

Bring the water to boil in a small non-reactive pan.  
Remove from the heat and add the tea.  
Leave to steep for 3 minutes.
Strain out the tea leaves and pour the liquid back into the pan.  Add the prunes and the sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar and heat gently for 10 minutes to soften the prunes.  
Remove from the heat.
When cold, pour the pan contents into a porcelain or glass bowl, cover tightly and refrigerate until needed (keeps up to 1 week).

Buttermilk Pudding

(Serves 6)
3 leaves of gelatin

150ml (5fl oz) double cream

70g 2½ oz caster sugar

1 vanilla pod, split
450ml (16fl oz) buttermilk*

Cover the gelatine leaves in cold water and leave to soften for 3-4 minutes.
Place the cream and sugar in a pan along with the scraped out seeds and pod of the vanilla. 
Bring to the boil, stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar then remove from the heat.
Remove the gelatine leaves from the water, squeezing out any excess, and stir the gelatine into the warm cream.
Remove the vanilla pod and stir in the buttermilk.
Pour the mix into small ramekins and place in the fridge for at least three hours or overnight.
When ready to serve, put a few centimetres of hot water in a shallow bowl and quickly dip the ramekins in for a 3-4 seconds to loosen the buttermilk puddings from the sides.  Dry the ramekins, place a plate on top of each and invert to turn out (you'll hear a distinctive 'slurp' sound - if not, dip the ramekin in hot water again for another second and repeat the process.

Serve with a few poached prunes and a little of the liquor.

Sources:
V&A Museum
“Drinking a dish of tea with Sapho": The sexual fantasies of Lady Mary Wortley Mongagu and Lord Byron by Alison Winch
Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters

* Buttermilk is a by-product of butter-making.  It is the low-fat, milky liquid that separates off during the process.  I use "pasteurised buttermilk" rather than "cultured buttermilk" which is thicker and has a longer shelf-life but I haven't tested it in this recipe.

Tea with Susie Cooper

Susie Cooper Bone China
Design: Glen Mist 1956-1960
Photograph: Take One Dish

My flat is tiny, yet I have a whole kitchen cupboard given over to something I don't even feel is mine.  It's one of those treasured possessions that get passed down through families.  You hope when it happens to you it will be a small tactile bronze you can place on a bookshelf or a little watercolour that looks just right hanging above that chair in the corner.  I have a 22-piece delicate bone china tea service.  It's beautiful but makes an appearance rarely for fear a careless sweep of the hand should wound its perfection.  It belonged to my 'mother-in-law' and I'm sure she'd be dismayed that I feel this way about it.  

The Set was designed by Susie Cooper and the mark shows it was produced by her own factory in the late 1950's.  The design is 'Glen Mist' and it continued to be produced by Wedgwood for many years after their takeover of Susie Cooper's business.  The V&A Museum, who have a later, Wedgwood produced, example in their collection, describe the design as: White body with clear glaze. Rim of plate edged with pale grey-blue band. At the centre, covercoat with pattern of two flowers and a bud (poppies) in powder-blue, pale green and pale khaki, on stems.

Susie Cooper was a woman in a hurry.  Intending to study Fashion after taking art classes at the Burslem School of Art, she was rejected by London's Royal College of Art for not having relevant work experience.  To gain that, she joined potters AE Gray in her home town of Stoke on Trent as a paintress.  She was quickly appointed resident designer and given her own designer mark.  It was 1922, she was 20 years old.  Seven years later she opened her own 'Susie Cooper pottery' business.  Within 2 years she had moved the pottery twice, arriving at her celebrated 'Crown Works' in Burslem in 1931.  By the late 1930's Cooper was supplying her good value, functional, modern,  and innovative earthenware designs to stores like Harrods, Selfridges, Peter Jones and Heals.

In the early years she bought in 'white ware', decorating the earthenware pieces in the bold colour floral, geometric and modernist designs popular at the time.  Soon the development of lithographic patterns and crayon decoration brought a move away from hand-painting.  Fire damage at the works, which also destroyed her stock of lithographs, closed the factory between 1942-1945.  After the war, rationing restrictions forced a return to techniques of hand-painting, aerograph and sgraffito decoration.  Cooper's colours became more subdued and organic and plant forms informed the designs.

In 1950 Susie Cooper acquired the manufacturer Jason China Compnay Ltd and began designing new shapes for the process. 1957 saw a second fire at the Crown Works, ceasing production for a year.  In 1958, with ambitions to produce a range of dinnerware, she merged the company with RH & SL Plant, but the Crown Works remained her hub. A successful takeover bid in the 1960s resulted in the business becoming part of the Wedgwood Group.  Cooper continued to work on designs and had her own 'Wedgwood' mark.  Frustrations with corporate structure coincided with the death of her husband and in 1972 she resigned as a Director but continued to design for Wedgwood, and others, into the early 1980s.  In 1979 recession hit and Wedgwood closed Cooper's beloved Crown Works.  Creative and determined, Susie Cooper was an icon of design.  She died in 1995.

Yorkshire Curd Tart
served on Susie Cooper
'Glen Mist' design bone china tea service
Photograph: Take One Dish

My 'mother-in-law' was a Yorkshire woman and had to pass on her treasured possessions far too soon.  She was the kindest person I ever knew so, when I make a Yorkshire Curd Tart, the Susie Cooper tea service definitely has to come out.

A single earthenware Susie Cooper Jug would have been easier to handle, but I do love 'my' 22 piece tea service.  It was meant to be used. Time to dust it off, I think, but carefully.

What's a Yorkshire Curd Tart?
To a pot of curd cheese add sugar, a scattering of dried fruit, a pinch of spice, an egg or two and a little butter to enrich. Pour the mixture into a pastry case and you have it.  Crunchy pastry, soft luscious filling and the fragrance of nutmeg filling your kitchen.




Yorkshire Curd Tart
A recipe of 1741 instructs us to use "butter that is well-washed in rosewater" - not something we are in the habit of doing today!

 Pastry:

(makes enough for 2 x 22cm tarts)

250g (10oz) plain flour

25g (1oz) ground almonds
150g (6oz) butter
75g (3oz) icing sugar
Grated rind of half a lemon
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons milk

Filling (makes enough for 1 x 22cm tart)
300g (12oz) *curd cheese
2 eggs
125g (5oz) caster sugar
50g (2oz) currants
Grated rind of half a lemon
A good pinch of cinnamon
Half a nutmeg, grated
1 tablespoon of rosewater (optional)
25g melted butter

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the ground almonds.  Add the butter and rub in with fingertips.  Sift in the icing sugar, add grated lemon rind and mix.  Lightly beat the egg yolk and milk together and stir into the dry ingredients.  Mix until the paste just comes together, turn out and knead gently to smooth the surface.  (You will need half of this mixture for your tart so divide and freeze the other half for next time).  Cover and rest in fridge for 30 minutes.

Lightly butter a 22cm shallow tart tin.  Roll out the pastry thinly on a lightly floured surface and line the tin with it.  Prick the base with a fork several times and rest in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 200C (180C fan oven).  Bake the pastry blind for 10 minutes.  Remove the baking beans and paper, turn down the oven to 180C (160C fan oven) and return the tart to the oven for another 4-5 minutes to fully cook the base.

Mix the curd cheese with the currants, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon rind (and rosewater if using).  Beat the eggs with the sugar then add to the curd mixture along with the cooled melted butter.  Pour into the pastry case and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes until the top is golden and the filling set.  Once cooled, serve with no embellishment.

*If you can't find curd cheese, make a simple lactic curd by bringing 1.5ltrs  of whole  milk (“raw” if you can get it) to just below boiling point, add juice of 1 lemon, leave overnight in a cool place (not the fridge) then pour into a muslin-lined sieve to separate the liquid from the curds.


Sources:
susiecooper.net
V&A Museum
thepotteries.org

Lemonade Jug

Wedgwood earthenware lemonade jug ca 1939; design by Eric Ravilious

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The shape of this Queen's Ware jug is voluptuously curvaceous.  The  Josiah Wedgwood and Sons 'Liverpool' shape was one of their most traditional forms.  It derived from the large cream ware and porcelain jugs of the same shape made in Liverpool in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  You can envisage how it would feel to grasp the generous handle in one hand, taking the weight of the full jug in the other, just below its wide belly, to pour the contents.  It's practical and robust; an everyday cream earthenware jug.

Tactile as it is, it was the Eric Ravilious design rather than the form that stopped me in my tracks when browsing the Victoria and Albert Museum's ceramics collection.  Transfer-printed in black and colour-washed, a barrel with garden tools and ivy decorate one side.  On the other, a cat sleeps while bees buzz around a hive and a wheelbarrow awaits the gardener's return from his break - all reassuring ideals of Britishness. 

Eric Ravilious is on my mind having last year attended an insightful talk by James Russell at London's Bankside Gallery and later catching the exhibition of Ravilious' Prints at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in December.  

A number of contemporary British artists were commissioned to design ceramics in the 1930's in response to a growing demand for simplicity.  Eric Ravilious designed for Wedgwood between 1936 and1940 but wartime restrictions meant many of his designs did not go into production in any quantities until the 1950's.  Regrettably, Ravilious did not live to see it.  Made an Official War Artist in 1940, he was lost on active service in 1942.  In addition to ceramics, Ravilious designed glass for Stuart Crystal and furniture for Dunbar Hay.  He is best known today for his work as a muralist, painter, wood-engraver, lithographer, book-illustrator and War Artist. For me, his pastoral landscapes and rural interiors are love letters to the English countryside, frequently odd but ever enchanting.

So why a Lemonade Jug?  Our 19th century ancestors appreciated the value of lemons in the diet to combat the disease 'scurvy'.  Whether amongst sailors who had to subsist on dried foods for long periods, or people who lived on a poor diet lacking in Vitamin C, the arrival of the first lemons of the new season from the Mediterranean region was eagerly awaited.  In late winter, in the home, a lemon drink was made from them to "cleanse the blood".  The rich would serve their lemonade from crystal. For the rest, a ceramic jug would suffice.  The Wedgwood 'Liverpool' form earthenware with the Ravilious 'Garden Implements' design would be my choice.

This year the main Winter/Spring season brought really good, fragrant, zesty lemons.  These days, some of the trees in Liguria crop throughout the summer.   As I've offered you a Lemonade Jug as this month's Take One Dish, how can I not offer you a recipe for lemonade?  This one is adapted from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book.  For me, Jane Grigson was one of the best writers on British Food (though not exclusively British) so choosing her recipe seems appropriate.  The first stage of the recipe produces a cordial.  This can be bottled, and kept for a few weeks ready, to be made into lemonade by adding carbonated or soda water.

Lemon Cordial (makes 20fl oz/600ml cordial)

3 large lemons

6 oz/175g caster sugar

Wash and then peel the lemons thinly.  Place the peel in a heavy-based 18cm/7 inch saucepan and cover with 2½cm/1 inch of cold water.  Cover with a lid and put on a very low heat.  Bring almost to the boil (boiling will make the cordial bitter).  Lift off the heat, allow to cool for a few minutes, then strain the liquid into a jug.  Squeeze the lemons and stir in the juice and the sugar. 

At this point you can either pour the cordial into a sterilised bottle to preserve it or dilute it to make lemonade for drinking straightaway.

Lemonade

20 fl oz/600ml lemon cordial

Carbonated or soda water

Dilute the cordial in a ratio of around 1 part cordial to 4 or 5 parts carbonated or soda water, add ice and mint leaves or borage flowers

Sources:

The Victoria and Albert Museum
The Wedgewood Museum

Tate Britain
James Russell

Jane Grigson's Fruit Book (Penguin Books)

Further reading on Eric Ravilious: Mainstone Press

Char Pots

Delftware char pot, painted decoration depicting fishes, Liverpool, possibly Zachariah Barnes, ca. 1750-1770

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Before moving to London I could get to Cumbria easily.  In 90 minutes I could be in Windermere and soon after walking the Fells.  Well away from the charging speedboats, on Coniston water a few small boats moved through the calmer waters.  Either side of the boats, fishing rods arched elegantly with lines cast to hook char or trout.  Not that I knew then what they were fishing out of the lake.  Chatting recently about vernacular art to a market trader - in another life a museum curator; for this is London where almost everyone has a second string to their bow - I learned about Char Pots.  These distinctive containers were produced in NW England to serve a centuries old industry of the Lake District.

Barrels of salted char (or charr) were regularly sent to feed the court of Henry VIII.  Char was baked in pies, the weighty crust acting more as a container than an edible pastry.  By 1680 pots had taken the place of pies and butter had usurped salt as a preservative.  Potted Char was so highly appreciated that it warranted its own special 'Char Pot'.  The "broad, thin Pots" were produced by the Liverpool Delftware factories from the early 18th century.   Made of tin-glazed earthenware, these 9 inch diameter flat bottomed dishes were traditionally painted with 5 encircling fishes.  The example above is thought to be from the Old Haymarket pottery of Zachariah Barnes, believed to be the biggest producer of Char Pots, dating from 1750-1770.  This example is in the care of the Victoria & Albert Museum, holders of the largest ceramics collection in the world.  Its buff colouring is enlivened with the distinctive naive paintings of fish in colours of grey, red and manganese-purple. Intrepid readers will find the pot in Room 138: Case 2: Shelf 3, a battered relic of an all but forgotten English delicacy.  In the 19th century the Staffordshire potteries produced smaller, 5 inch diameter, Char Pots transfer-printed with 3 fishes around the outside.  In recent years fragments of char dishes have also been found on the site of a Lancaster delftware pottery which was producing between 1750-1780 suggesting they may have been made even closer to the Lake District..

Arctic Char is a member of the Salmonidae family, a salt-water fish which swims up rivers to spawn.  It's thought some became trapped, cut off from the sea during the last ice-age and sought refuge in the deep water lakes which formed.  I'd heard the English folklore tale that freshwater char only exist in lake Windermere, but somehow I couldn't quite believe it.  

The intrepid traveller Celia Fiennes wrote in1698 of her stay at The King's Arms in Kendal and of her disappointment at being unable to eat its celebrated potted char.  Though she was familiar with the dish, she was "curious to see the great water which is the only place that fish is to be found in" (Lake Windermere).  Disappointed to find the "charr fish being out of season ..." she had to settle for other fish.  Daniel Defoe in his 'Tour through England and Wales'  in 1724 wrote "But I must not forget Winander Mere, which makes the utmost northern bounds of this shire, which is famous for the char fish found here and hereabout, and no where else in England; it is found indeed in some of the rivers or lakes in Swisserland among the Alps, and some say in North Wales; but I question the last. It is a curious fish, and, as a dainty, is potted, and sent far and near, as presents to the best friends ..." 

Hmm, a little more illuminating.  Then, thanks to the fantastically helpful Guildhall Library in the City of London, I chanced upon Mary Wondrausch OBE, the English artist, potter, historian and writer.  She presented a paper 'Potted Char' to the 'Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery' in 1995 for their chosen theme 'Disappearing Food: studies in foods and dishes at risk'.  Thanks to her study I learned Salvelinus alpinus (Char) is to be found in deep-water lakes in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and also, under different names, in Italy, France, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Iceland.  North America and Canada too have their own sub-species of char.  In British lakes they grow no bigger than 1½lbs (750g) but in more ideal cold conditions, such as Scandinavia, they can grow to more than 5lbs (2.2kg).  

Here in England, char can be found in small numbers in many of the Lake District's deep water lakes and was fished on Lake Windermere for centuries.  By 1860 overfishing brought a dramatic decline in the catch and today only rod-and-line fishing of Char is allowed on the lake during July-October.  A diet of crustacea is supplemented with its own species due to cannibalistic instincts.  A weak Char leans as it swims in a faltering fashion, its scales attracting the light and the unwanted attention of healthy Char.  Line-fishermen exploit this predatory behaviour by fishing with light-reflecting metal 'spinners'.   

Larousse described Char as "the finest and most delicate of fresh-water fish".  It's flesh can range in colour from pale pink to red and is, apparently, richer and more delicate than trout.  Early recorded recipes give instructions for long, slow cooking over several hours which suggests they would have been placed in a bread oven, taking advantage of the residual heat after baking.  The finished dish called for copious amounts of clarified butter to form a preserving seal, in much the same way as potted shrimp.  Not a food for the masses then.  Potted Char was appreciated all over the country by those who could afford it.  The pot needed to be reliably stable and stackable so that it could be transported, hence it was made wide, shallow and flat-bottomed.  Whether the decoration applied would have made the pot acceptable for placing on the dining table I do not know.  Certainly in the larder  the simply executed paintings of fish would have told what lay within those buttery depths.

Mary Wondhausch quotes several sources for how to pot your char.  Of these, Mrs Barton's of 1807 seems most appropriate to illustrate this piece. Mrs Barton was the wife of the Rector of Windermere in the early 19th century.

  
Char or trout 7½ lbs or 1 dozen fish; black pepper and salt; white pepper 1¼ oz; cloves 6 dramms; ground mace 2 dramms; clarified butter 2lbs, cayenne pepper.

Time: 12 hours to salt; 4 hours to bake

Method: Clean your fish, head and tail them, lay them 12 hours in black pepper and salt, sprinkle inside and out.

Then season inside and out with the white pepper, cloves and mace.

Lay them in a baking dish one by one and barely cover with clarified butter.  Bake four hours very slowly.

When cooked lay them open.

Take out the backbone and scrape with a knife point the thickest of the seasoning from inside of them, and

Dredge a little cayenne pepper in them.

Have ready your pots dry, lay the fish in on their backs, side by side, head and tail.

Fill up the ends with small fish, and press all tightly down with your hands.

Then barely cover them with clarified buter and when it has well soaked in, quite cover them.

For most of us these days wild char is simply not available.  Char, like trout is farmed in some parts of the northern hemisphere.  Personally, I'll pass on either fish if it's farmed.  As Jane Grigson wrote in her book, English Food, "smoking is the only way to make the over-produced farm trout edible" and I suspect the same goes for the char.  I'd seek out wild brown trout as a substitute for char in this, Mary Wondrausch's own version of, potted char.  It's a little more up to date to take account of present day cooking equipment and the limitations on numbers of fish.  I've slightly altered the wording for clarity, as well as exercising a preference for using clarified butter:

Potted Trout or Char

Take four trout or char, clean and split them open.

Grind salt and black pepper on them coarsely, and a little grated nutmeg.

Butter the bottom of a heavy pan and lay two fish skin-side down in it. 

Pound 1 teaspoon of mace and ¾ teaspoon of cloves in a pestle and mortar and sprinkle half the mixture on the fish.  Add the two remaining fish and sprinkle these with the rest of the mixture.

Top with about 3oz of clarified butter and cook in a *very low oven (140C/Gas 1) for at least 40 minutes.

When cool enough to handle, fillet and skin the fish.  Pack the filleted fish into a shallow pot and pour the spiced cooking juices over.  Top up with more melted, clarified, butter to completely cover and leave to cool.

* Mary Wondrausch's experience is you can leave this in a Rayburn oven for 40 minutes to several hours with no difference to the result.

If you're still not convinced, try Jane Grigson's Fish Book for a rather easier way with char, though it's more likely you'll have to settle for trout.  I think I need to make a late summer trip to The Lakes this year.  I need to have a chat with one of those fishermen and take a walk on the Fells again.

Sources:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery

1995 Disappearing food: studies in foods and dishes at risk: Mary Wondrausch: Potted Char

The Guildhall Library
Lake Guides

Lake District National Park
Phil Crouch

Further reading: Northern Ceramics Society Journal, vol. 25, 2008-9