Murder Mystery Party

On Wednesday March 19th Zenrinkan hosted the third annual Murder Mystery Party night, A Taste of Poison. 20 people attended the event which lasted for two hours. The setting took place in the land of England in the 13th century. The court of King Richard Colchester was hosting a event at his castle when someone made an attempt on the life of his wife Queen Mary Colchester by poisoning the royal wine. Luckily for the King and Queen, they were spared by the royal taste tester who drank the wine first. The loyal tester died but started our mystery for the night as the guests talked and asked questions to find out who among them was the murderer.


During the night, a delicious dinner was served that included an appetizer, vegetable soup, pork ribs, and pastry and cake dessert. In the end, many guesses were made but unfortunetly no one correctly identified the real murderer. However, everyone had fun and we are all looking forward to the next Murder Mystery Party.

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.

Kids' Festival

Today was the annual kids' festival at Zenrinkan. At 1.30, everyone gathered to be entertained by the students of 15 children's classes.

The program opened with the youngest students rendition of the "hello song" and the members of the Wednesday kid's class doing a very cute recital of "the wheels on the bus".

The older students mostly entertained us with some skits and we even had three poems and a selection of jokes.

"The Hare and the Tortoise" and a presentation about how to save the environment gave us pause for thought.

Not only were the performances wonderful, but the art work was also incredible, much of it made by the class teachers. お疲れ様でした！

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!

Christmas Party

This year's Christmas party was on a slightly smaller scale than previous years, with about 40 people in attendance. We started with a beautiful performance from the Nikko group who played a selection of pleasant Christmas tunes.

Other musical delights of the evening included the Let's Sing group's Christmas carol recital, including Walking in a Winter Wonderland and Jingle Bell Rock. The Tuesday reading group also sang Jingle Bells, with the twist of a high-energy game thrown in. Competitors had to make as many steps as the could register on a pedometer by dancing throughout the song!

The other game of the evening was pass-the-parcel, except instead of music, the competitors listened to a story and passed the parcel right when the narrator said "right" and left when they said "left".

Along side the music and games we also had two theatrical performances. The Tuesday evening reading group did a recital of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and the sign language group treated us to a performance of The Tongue Cut Sparrow.

The evening was of course complimented with Hiroko's wonderful Christmas dinner including a whole turkey and delicious stuffing and bread sauce.

We ended off the night with a traditional New Year song, Auld Lang Syne.