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.

Mince pies!

Mince pies are a traditional British Christmas sweet.  The name means ミンチパイ, but there is no meat inside the pies.  Instead there is fruit and spices and brandy.

Every Christmas we eat them and children often leave a Mince Pie for Santa (or Father Christmas as he is known in England) on New Year's Eve before they go to bed.

This year Nicola cooked and sold over 200 Mince Pies at Zenrinkan, so everyone was able to try a taste of a British Christmas.

English Cooking

Over the last few months we have continued the English cooking classes.

In August we made Eve's pudding. The dish is like a sponge cake with apples baked into it. The name comes from Eve in the Bible who couldn't resist the lovely sweet apples. This time we made it with the traditional apple, but we can prepare it with many different types of fruit. Of course we prepared a custard sauce to go on top.

In September we made chicken crumble. This is a savoury version of the sweet dish that is famous across England and America. The base is a chicken and vegetable stew and then it is topped with breadcrumbs, oats and cheese and baked in the oven.

In October we tried our hands at two dishes. We made the sweet crumble that August's cooking is based on. It is traditionally made with apples or peaches, but we also tried a pear one this time and everyone could have a bite of three flavours. While it was baking in the oven, we made a sponge pudding. This normally takes several hours to steam, so this time we cheated and made a microwave version that cooks in 4 minutes! Again, as well as the traditional raisin and cherry versions, we also prepared a chocolate one. We then made a vanilla sauce to top it off.

Summer Party

Today we had the annual summer party. As always, there was a bazaar and flea market, as well as various snacks for sale made by the Zenrinkan staff.

This year's International Lunch was as high a standard as always and all the guests had their fill of food from England, America, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Korea, China, Colombia, Mexico and more besides.

Sadly, everyone was too busy eating and serving to take any pictures, so the whole day went by without a single snap!

Being the same day as the Hachimangu festival, we were a little worried there would be a lack of guests, but in the end it turned out to be a record turn out and a wonderfully successful day.

July Cooking

This month we had a special request to learn how to make Quiche. So today we made a "Broccoli and Sausage Flan". Flan is the English name for the French quiche. This takes a really long time to cook in the oven though, so while we were waiting we made an old English favourite, "Sausage rolls".
Due to last night's earthquake, numbers were down a little, so we ended up with quite a lot to take home as well, so everyone enjoyed eating together and got to take something back for their families.

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.

English cooking

Today was the first of five lessons about British cooking. Today we made a popular English dish called Cobbler. The casserole base is made from sauce, beef and three kinds of vegetables, then scones are placed on top and cooked in the oven.

After we finished making it, we enjoyed eating it just as much!

International Festival

On September 19th, Zenrinkan hosted its annual International Festival, Lunch, and Bazaar in the hallowed halls of the chapel. Events started at 10 o'clock with the doors opening so guests could peruse the many items in the charity bazaar. There was quite a menagerie waiting to be recycled into new homes and bargain hunting browsers eagerly bought up the goods.

At 11 o'clock the International Lunch began to satisfy the appetites of the curious and the convivial. For 200 yen, a person could buy a ticket which entitled them to sample food from far away lands. The countries represented at the International Lunch came from Peru, Columbia, the U.K., the United States, Bangladesh, Korea, Zambia, and China. The foreign fare was ravenously consumed by the hungry horde which represented the diverse international community in Morioka and the monies contributed to charity.

Hanami picnic

We had our annual Zenrinkan cherry blossom viewing picnic in Iwate park today. After a cold and rainy morning, we were very lucky and the sun shined for us.

Many of our regular students joined us and we had quite a feast, including mochi, dango, sushi and....

...locusts!!!

Cottage Pie

Today 12 students got together and tried making traditional English Cottage Pie.

Everyone put on their aprons and in teams of 4, worked very hard to finish it all in time for lunch. Then we ate all together.

We all tried a little of the other team's dish too and it was amazing how different each one was. One team used very little salt and pepper and theirs had a more natural taste. One made theirs the very traditional way with no cheese on the top and the herbs they used were a little spicy. The final one was for me most similar to my mother's cooking, probably because of the herbs used.

Why don't you try making it too?

Ingredients:
1 onion
1 carrot
1 tbs of oil
500g beef mince
2 tbs of flour
1 tbs of ketchup
1 tbs of Worcester sauce
Peas
Corn
Mixed herbs
285ml stock
4 large potatoes
1 tbs of butter
salt and pepper
Grated cheese

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190°C

Peel the potatoes.
Cut into 4 pieces and place in a saucepan with cold water.
Add a little salt to the water and boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.


Peel and chop the onion and carrot.
Heat the oil in a large fry pan.
Add the onion and cook.
Add the minced beef and sauté.
When the mince is brown add the flour and cook for one minute.
Add the tomato sauce, Worcester sauce, carrot, peas, corn and herbs.
Gradually add the stock and boil.
Reduce the heat and cover for 10 minutes.
Add salt and pepper.


Drain and mash the potatoes.
Add butter and a little milk to make the potato creamy.


Put the meat mixture into a dish, then put the mashed potato on top.
Make lines in the potato with a fork.
Sprinkle cheese on top (optional).
Bake until the potato is a light brown colour.