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

Three Pears

Paul Cézanne, French, 1839–1906: Three Pears (Trois Poires)

ca. 1888–90. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on cream laid paper

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

Paul Cézanne was living in Aix-en-Provence when he painted Trois Poires.  He was isolated from his fellow impressionist and post-impressionist artists.  It must have been autumn or early winter when he selected his three perfect even-sized pears.  He arranged them on a plain dish set upon a table spread with a patterned cloth of curling blue flourishes echoing the fullness of the fruit.  The still-life was painted around 6 years before the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard held Cézanne's first one-man exhibition which featured this work in 1895.  Both Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir wanted to own Trois Poires and settled the matter by drawing lots - Degas was the victor. 

Around the mid-20th century the painting was in the hands of Henry Pearlman, a New Yorker who made his fortune in the cold storage business.  Pearlman's passion for late 19th and early 20th century art ran deep and over three decades he amassed works by artists such as Soutine, Modigliani, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Renior, Manet, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and lesser known artists.  I love the sound of Henry Pearlman.  His art collecting genuinely seems to have been based on true appreciation rather than sheer acquisitiveness.  The Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection is on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum and fifty artworks from the collection are in the touring exhibition Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection.  You can catch the exhibition, as I did, at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 22 June 2014.  It then moves on, appropriately, to Aix en Provence before returning across the Atlantic to Atlanta, Gerogia and Vancouver, Canada, before ending its tour at the Princeton University Art Museum.  The stars of the show, for me, are undoubtedly the Cézannes; the still-lifes and landscapes in particular.

Pyrus communis "Jargonelle"

In London, the pear blossom came and went in the blink of an eye this spring.  Pink-tinged buds quickly opened to present pure white cups with delicate deep-red anther topped filaments. All too soon they faded, but what the blossom lacked in longevity it made up for in abundance.  A promising number of acorn-sized green fruits, tinged with russet-brown, jostle for position.  Espaliered against a south-facing brick wall, it's labelled Pyrus communis 'Jargonelle' - derived from the European or common pear.  I like the fact the gardener broke the planting rules with this pear - "A tip bearer, not suitable for training into cordons or espaliers".

Sadness at the withered blossom is replaced by the hope for a basket of ripe, juicy pears come September - even if they will be enjoyed by someone else.  By the 17th century 300 pear varieties were recorded and the French were the fruits main champion.  The Jargonelle, or Gergonell, is one of the few survivors of the wave of pear varieties which arrived in the UK from France in the early 17th century. It's an early pear, and the first to ripen are the worst keepers.  Decay in pears starts from the core so a perfectly good looking fruit may be hiding a shrivelled, brown heart.

The chances of seeing a Jargonelle pear on the fruit counter today are slim, I think, though you might come across one in a private orchard.  The mighty Doyenné du Comice, twice as weighty, is much more likely to end up in your shopping basket - but the Comice is undeniably superior.  Edward Bunyard in his Anatomy of Dessert writes on the storing of Comice pears "When the green colour begins to change to yellow the moment of watchfulness arises, and when the whole fruit is an even yellow the moment has arrived....... no day should pass without inspection, but not handling."  Cézanne's curvaceous trio of pears may well have been comice.  Bearing just a touch of green, Bunyard would doubtless have pronounced them not quite ready to eat.

Here are my favourite simple instructions from Jane Grigson for cooking pears.  Quantities are imprecise. It's intuitive cooking, the kind of dish you feel your way into, and in my view, the best kind.  According to Grigson "any ripe but still firm ... fragrant eating pear will do".  

Buttered Pears 

Allowing one pear per person, peel, core and cut into wedge-shaped slices, sprinkling them with lemon juice to stop browning as you work.  Fry them gently in clarified unsalted butter until golden brown then turn and sprinkle with caster sugar.  Cook until the juices caramelise.  Remove the pear pieces to serving dishes. Deglaze the pan with a little water, and a splash of pear brandy if you have it, boil down a little and stir in some cubes of unsalted butter.  Pour the sauce over the pears.

I cook apples similarly to this, adding a little cream at the end after taking the pan off the heat.  Worth a try with pears too, I think, when the "moment" arrives.


Sources and further reading:
Paul Cézanne
Three Pears ca. 1888-1890
Ashmolean Museum
FT article: Cezanne and modern masterpieces from the Pearlman Collection by Jackie Wullschlager
Princeton University Art Museum: The Pearlman Collection
The Pearlman Foundation
The National Fruit Collection, Brogdale
Jane Grigson's Fruit Book

Muffin Dish

Dish and lid
Bawden, Edward
after 1960
© National Maritime Museum Collections   

I cannot contemplate arriving in Greenwich except by boat.  This World Heritage Site is forever linked to its maritime history and arriving by any other means of transport just seems wrong.  On this day I jump aboard the Thames Clipper at Bankside Pier for the 25 minute trip down river, passing the Tower of London, ducking under Tower Bridge, past Dickensian alehouses and the, admittedly, less picturesque complex of flats looking a little like a Tuscan hill village - but maybe it's just me who sees this resemblance.  Soon the magnificence of Greenwich starts to unfold.

I'm really here for the *Turner & the Sea exhibition at The National Maritime Museum but, en route, my eye is caught by the unmistakable hand of Edward Bawden.  Surprisingly, it is decorating a Wedgwood dinner service.  It's the dish lid that I notice.  Purple petals radiating out from the centre of the white dome, echoed in soft grey on plate, saucer and cup.  An unexpected touch of domesticity in a temple to heroic maritime history. A ship's menu from the 1960's is placed alongside. The white bone china 'Heartsease' service is lithographic transfer printed in purple, grey and black using Bawden's 1952 design for Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd.  It's here because it was supplied to the Orient Line, now part of P&O, though this lovely service was confined to First Class.  Tourist Class passengers had to make do with a much more utilitarian, grey-on-white design.

Wedgwood commissioned a number of other 20th century British artists to design ceramics including Eric Ravilious, Rex Whistler and John Piper.  Born in Essex in 1903, Edward Bawden (C.B.I., R.A., R.D.I.) studied illustration, book design and mural painting at the Cambridge School of Art and then the Royal College of Art where he was taught by Paul Nash.  His first commission was to paint the murals in the dining rooms of Morley College in south-east London, along with fellow students Eric Ravilious and Charles Mahoney. Bawden was allocated the one uninterrupted wall on which he painted scenes from Shakespeare's plays. His work included landscapes, book illustrations and cover designs for publishing houses, posters and advertisements, including for London Transport. He also served as an Official War Artist in the British Army. Later he returned to mural painting and graphic design.  I know him best for his distinctive linocuts, such as those depicting London Monuments and London Markets.

I'm not usually drawn to heavily patterned ceramics but Bawden's 'Heartsease' design is undeniably beautiful. The plate and cover I initially take to be a soup dish with lid - visions of weaving waiters battling high seas - turns out to be a muffin dish. A dish for muffins seems a quaint idea today but the Georgians, Victorians and Edwardians all loved a silver or silver-plate muffin dish.  A reservoir in the base of the dish was filled with hot water to keep the muffins desirably warm and soft at table.  Later a warmed, covered china dish sufficed. Clearly a muffin dish was still deemed necessary in the 1950/60s where standards for first class passengers could not be allowed to slip.

English Muffin recipes started to appear in print the mid-18th century.  From Hannah Glasse in 1747 to Florence Jack in 1914, muffin recipes were considered an essential part of the cook's repertoire. By 1954 Dorothy Hartley was writing of muffins being "usually obtained from the bakehouse" but long before this the 'Muffin Man' peddled his wares on the city streets.  Elizabeth David devotes a chapter to Crumpets and Muffins in her English Bread and Yeast Cookery and points out that although they are "among the most famous of English specialities", by the 1970's they "are more talked about than actually experienced".  We revisit them only when "the spasmodic wave of nostalgia for bygone popular specialities breaks over the British press and its cookery contributors".  So here we are again, for in 2014 crumpets and English muffins are enjoying a revival.

"Many a muffin-man regards warm flour as his No. 1 secret."

Walter Banfield, Manna, 1937

Master baker John Kirkland, in 1907, described muffins as "thick, extremely light, fermented dough cakes, not holey or tough, three inches across and almost two inches thick".  This recipe for muffins is based on one in The Bread Book by Linda Collister & Anthony Blake (first pub: 1993) which references John Kirkland.

English Muffins
(makes 8)

340g (12 oz) unbleached white bread flour
110g(4 oz) unbleached plain white four
10g (¼ oz) salt
15g (½ oz) fresh yeast
½ teaspoon sugar
230ml (8 fl oz) lukewarm water
140ml (5 fl oz) lukewarm milk
Flour for dusting
Rice flour or cornmeal for dusting

Mix the flours and salt in a large mixing bowl and warm in a 150C (Gas 2) oven for a few minutes.  Crumble the yeast in to a small bowl, add the sugar and half the lukewarm water and mix to a cream.
Make a well in the flour and add the yeast liquid, the rest of the water and the milk.  Mix with your hand to a soft, slightly sticky dough.  With floured hands, either knead the dough against the side of the bowl or turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and work for 10 minutes until it's no longer sticky but soft, elastic and smooth.  Put the dough into the bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Turn out the dough and knead again for 5 minutes (John Kirkland recommends dipping your hands in lukewarm water first).  Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave for a further 30 minutes.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and, using rice flour to dust, form gently into rounds.  Place on a baking tray dusted with rice flour and sprinkle over more rice flour.  Place a second light baking tray on top, then a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for a final 30 minutes.
Heat an un-greased griddle or cast-iron frying pan until moderately hot.  Put the muffins onto the griddle topside down.  Cook for 10-12 minutes on each side until golden brown.  They are cooked when the sides spring back when pressed.

English muffins do not keep well.  If you don't eat them straight from the griddle you may need Mary McNeill's advice from The Book of Breakfasts published in 1932, "Muffins should not be split and toasted.  The correct way to serve them is to open them slightly at their joint all the way round, toast them back and front, tear them open and butter the inside liberally.  Serve hot."

I'm not sure muffin dishes will have a revival any time soon but I would certainly say yes to that Edward Bawden 'Heartsease' dish.  As if the design were not enough,  there's the choice of subject, Heartsease, Viola tricolour, the wild pansy, symbol for thoughts and faithfulness, Oberon's "... little Western flower".

Edward Bawden
1903-1989

Sources:
The National Martime Museum, Greenwich
Josiah Wedgwood Museum
edwardbawden.co.uk 
Tate
The Morley College Murals by Elaine Andrews
English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David
The Bread Book by Linda Collister & Anthony Blake

* The Turner and the Sea exhibition has now moved on to The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA, USA and runs from 31 May - 1 September 2014