June Corn Dolly

This month the corn dolly class tried their hand at hanging baskets. It is a difficult technique as the shape must gradually get wider and wider from a point to make a cone and keeping the sides an equal length is very tricky.  There were a lot of false starts, but eventually everyone got it!

May Cooking

Today in cooking we made a Scottish sweet called macaroons.  Maybe many of you know the French macaroon made from meringue, but these are a pastry made with almond powder.  Inside there is a spongy almond center with jam inside.  We made two types, one with a pastry lid and the other with a cherry on top.

Nuno Zori

Today with the sign language circle we made some Japanese cloth slippers.  They were so fun to make and even though it took a lot of concentration, it was certainly worth it.  I have been wearing them around the house and they are so comfortable.

I made a website about how to make them, so if you haven't tried before, give it a go!

May Corn Dolly

Over two sessions, the corn dolly class members completed their most difficult project so far.  They made praying angels.  The dress is a very difficult technique, but all the students managed it without too many problems.

In the first two hour session, they made the wings, arms and head.  Then they spent the second two hours making the dress.

Corn Dolly Making

One of Zenrinkan's teachers, Nicola, introduced the British craft of making corn dollies today.

Many years ago in Pagan England, people believed in many different gods, similar to the Japanese Shinto belief. One of these gods was believed to live in the wheat, so when it was cut down at harvest time, it became homeless, so the people made corn dollies for it to live in over the winter. The shape of the corn dolly varied by region.

The corn dolly we made today is a simple version called a "countryman's favour" and has no connection to religion. This came from the custom of men making a heart shaped favour for ladies when they were walking in the countryside. If the lady was wearing her present the next time he saw her, it meant the love was reciprocated.

Among the members were three elementary school students who all said they had a nice time.

Halloween Classes

It is almost Halloween, so this week has seem some very spookey classes! The children have been learning about ghosts and goblins and other gruesom Halloween words.

As a Halloween creepy craft, the children prepared Marshmallow Frankensteins. They dipped marshmallows in green food colouring, then used melted chocolate to make the hair and mouth, and stuck candy eyes on using the chocolate. It was then finished off with some pretzel bolts.

May Cooking

This month in cooking we made Chicken and Leek Pot. The outside is a ring of cheesy pastry of French origin that is called Gougere. It is like a pie, but has no top and no bottom. The inside is a kind of stew with meat and vegetables. Today we made it with chicken and leeks, but a tomato sauce with beef and onions is also very delicious.

April Cooking

This month in English cooking, we made two dishes. We made a savoury dish called Fish Cake and a sweet mini-pie called Eccles Cake.

The Eccles cake was first made in 1769 by a lady called Mrs Raffald, but then it was simply know as a "sweet patty". A servant girl in the house took the recipe when she moved to a town called Eccles and opened a shop selling them. By the beginning of the 19th Century they were being exported to America and the West Indies. Now they are famous throughout the world. Recently they were debated in Parliament to decide if cakes made outside the town of Eccles could be called Eccles cakes. We shall have to wait longer for an answer! These cakes are popular for picnics and snacks and are sometimes called "Dead Fly Pies" because of the raisins.

This week's cooking

In today's cooking class we made a selection of dishes. The main recipe was "Bakewell Tart". This is an English cake dating from 1839. It is also known as Bakewell Pudding. It has a pastry base covered with a layer of fruit, then a nut-based cake mixture topped with whole nuts. We made it with strawberries and almonds, which is the most traditional style, but it is also sometimes made with peanuts and blackcurrants, apples or peaches.

To go with the pudding we made custard. This is very difficult to make and both groups did very well, although one type became a little lumpy, but this is quite common. Custard uses only the yolk of the egg, so with the whites we made impromptu macaroons. A students brought an English cooking apple, which are rare to see in Japan, so we cooked that into apple sauce for everyone to try. Cooking apples are very bitter and don't taste nice raw, but when cooked make a lovely sauce to go with meat, or with a little more sugar, a tasty dessert.

Cooking

Today we made two different dishes in cooking class; cheese & onion pasty, and shortbread.

Pasties have been popular in England since 1200. They were first eaten in Cornwall by men who worked in the mines. They were a semi-circular shape and quite big. Inside there was a meat, a vegetable and a jam section each separated by a pastry wall. On the outside the miners' wives wrote their husbands' initials in pastry so they could find their own pie. The special shape meant that there was a thick crust that the miners could hold and then throw away when they had eaten it. This was useful so they didn't have to wash their hands and they could give some food to the gods in the mine. The original pasties were made from short crust pastry, but today we made them with puff-pastry.


The second recipe was a sweet biscuit called shortbread. These were first eaten in Scotland in 1500. The word "short" is old English meaning crumbly or easily broken.

British Cooking Part 2

Today we cooked Egg Custard in the third Zenrinkan British Cookery Class. My house in England is in East Anglia, a region that is famous for this dessert, so I often ate them growing up.


Custard tarts were first served in Britain in Medieval times when they were known as doucets. Henry IV is said to have eaten them at a meal when he became king in 1399. Now we make them with milk, but long ago they used almond milk when they weren't allowed to eat rich dairy products on religious fast days.


This dessert was exported to many places in the world. It is the basis of the French Creme Brulee and a similar product has been eaten in Portugal since 1800. If you visit China now you will find Egg Tarts (Dan Ta) at many dinner tables. These were brought from Britain in the mid 17th Century, probably via Guangdong.

Japanese Calligraphy

Today was the first of Zenrinkan's monthly calligraphy classes.

Even though it was the first time, we still had about 10 students come and participate.

Many of the participants were trying calligraphy for the first time, so we practiced breaking-in a new brush and talked about the history of calligraphy and ink.

First we made a very thin ink and thought about what image this colour brought to our minds, such as mist, condensation and smoke, and then we wrote a Chinese character to represent it. We then made it a little darker and wrote a different character and finally we did it with a very dark ink.

Once we had practiced writing these characters, we wrote them on a postcard and put them in a frame. Everyone wrote very beautiful letters.

We finished the lesson by learning the first basic stroke technique, the 's' shape, and practiced drawing horizontal lines.

Our next lesson will be on the 30th of June from 4pm, so I hope you can join us!