Orientation and Bakewell Tarts

Orientation began this week at SOAS. I've been attending welcome lectures, meeting other post grad students, and waiting in lots of queues for ID cards, library cards, and enrollment processing.

London Lesson #6: The English love queues!

In fact, it turns out that queuing is a national pastime! When I went to get into the line for ID cards, I was shocked to find three people assigned to the task of organizing the line! One person told us where to queue (in case it wasn't obvious to go to the end of the line), one person went around straightening the line, making the line more uniform and orderly (forming a beautiful snake line with tight, crisp edges along the wall), and the third person made sure that as you neared the front of the line, you sat in chairs and moved to each consecutive chair as the line moved forward (which made it like a game of musical chairs). Maybe this is a sign that SOAS has more than enough administrative support? Since the queue regulators were volunteer students and weren't getting paid to be so enthusiastic about straight lines, I'm guessing that queue organization is hardwired in the English DNA. Look for Queue Formation as the new Olympic sport at the London 2012 games.

With an especially rainy day today, and with our shortbread depleted, I thought it was time to make another English tea time treat to fortify us through our studying sessions. And so I decided to make a classic English tart: the Bakewell tart.

The Bakewell tart comes from the Derbyshire town of Bakewell. It is made up of a shortcrust pastry shell filled with a thin layer of raspberry jam and topped with frangipane--an almond and egg sponge-like filling. A very popular tea time dessert, Bakewell tarts can be found in every grocery store, bakery, and tea house. I love pies and I love frangipane, so I thought this would be the perfect introduction to the strange world of English desserts. I decided to make mini tarts since David gave us a patty tin (mini tart pan). And I added cocoa powder to the filling to make it more decadent. The recipe is pretty straight forward and the tarts turned out to be delicious!!!!! Ryan, a big fan of Bakewell Tarts, said it is the best he's had! So here it is, step by step:

Chocolate Bakewell Tart

Pastry

3 oz (1/4 c. + 2 Tbsp.) unsalted butter

5 oz (1/2 c. + 2 Tbsp.) flour

1 oz (2 Tbsp) sugar

1 egg yolk

2 Tbsp water

Filling

3 oz (1/4c. + 2 Tbsp.) self rising flour

2 Tbsp cocoa powder

4 oz (1/2 c.) unsalted butter

4 oz (1/2 c.) sugar

2 whole eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 oz (1/2 c.) ground almonds

2 Tbsp lemon juice

zest from one lemon

Seedless raspberry jam

Combine the flour and butter for the crust in a bowl and work the butter into the flour using your fingertips or a pastry blender. Add the sugar, egg yolk, and water and mix together with a fork until the dough comes together into one ball. If the dough is a too wet to handle, add a little more flour. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes. For the filling, combine the butter and

sugar and beat with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the batter and stir until combined. Fold in the almond meal, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

Roll the dough out until 2 cm thick and line a 10 inch tart pan or cut out circles to line mini tart shells. Using high quality seedless raspberry jam, spread a very thin layer of jam along the bottom of the dough lined pan or shells. Fill the pan or shells to the top with the frangipane filling. For the 10 inch tart, bake at 425 for 15 minutes and then 350F for another 15 minutes. For small tarts, bake at 375F for 20 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Let cool completely. Dust with icing sugar (powdered sugar).

Yields 1 10 inch tart or 15 individual tarts. Enjoy!

Note: It is always more accurate to measure by weight, but if you don't have a scale, approximate volume measurements are in parenthesis. :)

Rain, Stew, Meeting the neighbors (and learning about Carbon Monoxide)

The weather has turned, with the last couple of days being rainy and cold. We've made the most of these days by staying inside and studying. Ryan has been very productive and I have been getting back into the groove of being a student. Orientation begins next week and classes officially start for me October 4th. It has been nice to have these extra weeks to settle in and prepare for classes.

To help us with the weather change (and keep our brains well fueled), we made a delicious bean and vegetable stew with chicken stock we made from scratch! Nothing like a hearty homemade soup to make you feel brand new!

Last night, as we finished our soup and were roasting vegetables in the oven for Ryan's famous vegetable hummus, a piercing alarm from the kitchen jolted us out of our chairs. We thought it was the smoke detector but soon realized it was the carbon monoxide detector. After silencing the alarm and opening all the windows, we thought, "ooo, should we call someone?" I remember being instilled with the fear of carbon monoxide's toxicity as a child by my mom: "odorless, tasteless, and colorless--hundreds of people die every year!" It could be a false alarm...I had images in my head of us going to sleep and being found weeks later by British Gas workers. Since I still had in mind the email my mom sent me last week about the gas explosion near San Francisco that killed 4 and burned 38 homes, I thought, better safe than sorry. I didn't want to be known as the "American-that-burned-down-the-neighborhood." So we called the emergency number on the alarm and within 30 minutes an employee of the National Grid had arrived to shut off our gas until British Gas could come the next day to do a safety check. Before leaving, the National Grid technician gave us a brand new electric space heater and an electric hot plate! Fast, efficient, friendly service, AND free appliances?! This is my kind of country!

While we were waiting for the gas to be turned off, our neighbors had invited us in for a glass of wine so we wouldn't have to wait outside in the cold. Once the serviceman had left, we took a couple pieces of shortbread down to our neighbors to thank them for their hospitality. We were invited in again and ended up spending several hours learning all about the neighborhood and the building we live in (which had been bombed in WWII and is therefore the only non-Victorian building on our street). Our neighbors, a counselor for the needy (originally from France) and a police officer (born in Ireland), are warm, funny, and laid-back. They told us of all the good restaurants in the area and some of their favorite weekend food markets We are lucky to have caring and affable neighbors (and ones who love food as much as we do)!

Everything turned out fine with our appliances. British Gas came and confirmed that nothing was leaking. They did a safety check on all the appliances and gave us a new carbon monoxide detector and mounted it on the wall just OUTSIDE of the kitchen. Since our kitchen is so small and can get hot and humid quickly, he said having the alarm slightly further away will prevent this from happening again. So we are alive, un-poisoned, and our kitchen is ready to make many safe meals for us this year!

London lesson #5: having good neighbors can save your life! And having a good shortbread recipe will ensure good relations with your neighbors! So here's the recipe that harbored us while we escaped the suspected carbon monoxide fumes!

Bake, share, and enjoy!

English Shortbread

250 g (8.8 oz or 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp.) of unsalted, English butter

2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour

1/2 cup powdered sugar (icing sugar)

1/4 tsp. salt

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, cut the butter into the flour with your hands or with a pastry blender until the dough comes together. Alternatively, you can pulse all the ingredients together in a food processor until the dough comes together. Press into a 2 cm thick round and place on a parchment lined sheet pan. Score the dough into triangular wedges with a fork. Bake at 325F for about 40-55 minutes or until edges slightly brown. Let cool completely. Store in airtight container for up two weeks. Enjoy with copious amounts of tea!

Devon Feast at Alun's!

Sunday morning we left Exeter by train and headed for Teignmouth (TIN-muth), the sea side resort at the mouth of the river Teign (TEEN), that flows from Dartmoor. Up the river a little bit is the village of Bishopsteignton (bI-shep-STEIN-ten), where Alun lives and where Ryan has been living for the last two and a half years. Nestled into the hill, it is truly a village, with hardly any shops, two pubs, a post office, a convenience store, and a couple of churches. As we got off the bus and braced ourselves to walk up the hill with our luggage, we saw Alun in his car, coming back from church. What luck! We road into the village with him and said our proper hellos at his cozy house on Fore Street.

We had arrived just in time for the weekly Sunday meeting of the "Triumvirate." Nick and Sue, two of Alun's neighbors and long time friends, stop by Alun's every Sunday after church for tea. We sat in the front room chatting for about an hour, telling stories and working on the crossword puzzle together. It felt so good to be back in Devon, and to be with Alun, Nick, and Sue, people who, in my mind, are classically English (unlike the modern international hodge podge of London): warm, genuine, and wholesome.

After Nick and Sue left, we headed up to the Bishop John pub for a pint of Otter (the best Devon brew) and sat next to an ecclectic older couple, Neal and Merle. Originally from South Africa and New Zealand but living in England for the last 40 years as a doctor and costume designer in the West End of London, Neal and Merle were friendly and engaging. Four pints in they provided exceptionally entertaining conversation: thinking Ryan was an actor, calling me "Lady of the Curls" and telling me "discretion, dear girl," when while talking about croquet, I said I swing the mallet side by side and not between my legs, as is the custom here. And we never strayed far from food conversation: Neal wouldn't stop talking about crackling (crispy fat on pork roasts) and became his most lively when we mentioned apple cake. "She has owed me an apple cake for over a week!" he pointed accusingly at Merle. Well oiled, we departed the pub, Neal and Merle off to make a curry, and us off to make one of Alun's famous pork roasts.

Alun is a humble chef; he loves food, the process of making food, and sharing that good food with loved ones. He has an arsenal of recipes he has perfected that he cooks casually and with great ease. A twinkle in his eye, he speaks with hushed reverence about a memorable curry or kedgeree shared with friends in his home. Meals at Alun's have been some of my best meals in England. And this Sunday dinner wasn't any different.

We started with a take on French onion soup Alun had made the day before, complete with toasted brown bread (wheat bread) covered with stilton cheese! Divine! Our main course starred a pork roast that Alun had bought direct from a farmer across the river. The meat was packed with earthy, rich flavors, outlined with flawless crackling: the coveted delicacy of crunchy teeth shattering fat with an underside of buttery gooeyness. Accompanying the perfect pork: roasted potatoes, parsnips, carrots, leeks, and homemade applesauce. We finished with an apple cake made with the Bramley apples from Alun's garden. Moist, light, and with a dollop of thick whipped double cream, it was heaven! What indulgence! I was left numb with fullness and satisfaction! We finished the evening in the front room with coffee, port, and chocolates and talked until midnight. Alun's hospitality and generosity is a warm embrace that welcomes, sustains, and comforts. And even though I was thousands of miles away from Southern California, I felt home.

How powerful is food!

Weekend in Devon: the real England!

This weekend we took the train to Exeter (where Ryan goes to school) to spend time with some good friends and soak up the countryside! Exeter is located in Devon, one of the southwest counties of England and one of the prettiest parts of the country. Boyfriend needed to get some work done in Exeter and so we shed the crowded bustling streets of London for the lush hedgerows and pastures of the rural southwest. I haven't been to many places in England, but I have been to Devon several times and it always feels like going home. The people are the epitome of hospitality and chivalry, the landscape is vibrantly green and open, and the food is the best food I've ever had in all of England! To really know a country and its people, you have to go to it's heartland: the countryside.

We spent two nights in Exeter with Ruben, Ryan's good friend from Murcia, Spain. Saturday was a beautiful day so we took a stroll along the river Exe, pictured above. The scouts were having a fundraiser along the river bank, and so we loaded up on 1 pound sausage sandwiches and 50p homemade apple cake slices. With the amount of cake we bought, we must have financed a new boat or something for the scouts! And that was after the Devon cream honeycomb ice cream we had just purchased! Mmm....so good!

The walk was beautiful, peaceful, and invigorating with all the brilliant colors around us. We saw rabbits, waved at passing trains, and picked wild blackberries, which I was so eager to do that I jumped right into a patch of nettle and was sorely stung all around my ankle. Ouch! As idyllic as the walk was, we did have a destination: the double locks--an historic building in Exeter that also happens to be a charming pub right on the river. Drinking Devon cider (much like Belgian gueze) we took in the day and the beautiful weather. And the crazy, silly company we kept made it a truly perfect day.

English lesson #4: Make the most out of any day with beautiful weather, because on these days, England will quietly turn its humble treasures of fields, rivers, and gardens, into some of your greatest memories.

Next up: Sunday feast in Bishopsteignton with Alun!

First batch of cookies (biscuits) in the UK!

This morning I woke up very excited to see the sun shining through the yellow 1950s curtains on our bedroom window. Sunshine! "It's going to be the perfect day for a walk to Regent's Park!" An hour later, as we finished breakfast, I looked outside again as we prepared to leave on our walk. I was completely dumbfounded to see a dark gray, cloudy sky! "What happened to the sun?"

London lesson #1: The sun is elusive in England. As quickly as it appears, it can disappear, and usually will, anywhere from 10 to 30 different times a day. We're not in California anymore.

We enjoyed an incredible pizza in Camden, strolled through a brilliantly green Regent's Park, and explored the canals and Little Venice just north of Paddington. It was a perfect day, even with the sun playing hide and seek.

After doing some studying back at our flat (see kitchen window with herbs above), I decided to make my first batch of chocolate chip cookies in London. I had lugged my handheld kitchen aid mixer and favorite kitchen tools all the way from the US and carefully purchased all the ingredients for the cookies from Morrison's, so I was ready to start! Everything at room temperature, I plugged my handheld mixer into the converter and the converter into the socket; turned on the mixer and bam!! Sparks flew and the smell of burnt plastic filled the air!

London lesson #2: ALWAYS double check the voltage requirements of appliances and electronics before plugging them into an outlet in a foreign country.

Instead of buying a handheld mixer at the supermarket here in London with the proper voltage and electrical outlet for a mere 20 pounds (which would have been the simple and practical thing to do), I, being the sentimentalist I am, brought my mixer that I've had since college half way around the world, just to blow it up!! "Just focus on making the cookies," I told myself. So I put my French apron on for empowerment (I was told in culinary school that real French chefs eschew electrical mixers and prefer mixing by hand) and mustered the arm strength to start beating my cookie batter with a wooden spoon. Needless to say, the cookies came out pretty flat and pathetic looking, lacking the air to help them hold their shape. And while I will have no problem eating all of these with a cup of tea by the end of the week, they didn't come out tasting delicious either!

London lesson #3: Baking ingredients and equipment are not universal. You might think sugar is sugar whether in Los Angeles or London, right? No! I learned that the brown sugar here is not the same in texture as the brown sugar back home. The unsalted butter I used was a slightly different texture and color than I'm used to. And I couldn't find dark chocolate chips, so we bought an 85% chocolate bar and chopped it up. While it was very good chocolate, it was just too bitter for these cookies.

So my first batch of cookies came out a bit short of my standards. But...I've got a year to figure these ingredient and voltage issues out!

Miss you guys! Wish you were all here to be my guinea pigs! :) Love, Em

Settling into autumn in London

Hello everyone!!

After several hours on the phone with Virgin Media and a shopping stop at the Pound Saver to buy an adjustable wrench, we are finally connected to the internet! Yay! Now that we are electronically connected to the world, I feel more at home! :)

London is beautiful, busy, and boisterous. We live in a one bedroom apartment (flat) on the third floor (second floor to the Brits) of a triplex row house-like building. The street we live on, is a nice quiet residential street lined with three story row houses in a neighborhood nestled between Islington (an upscale, middle class neighborhood), Holloway (a multi ethnic working class neighborhood), and Camden (a Berkeley-esque community filled with young wanna-be bohemians and lots of avant-garde shops). We've spent the last couple of days exploring all of these neighborhoods on foot and we love where we are, right in the heart of all these different microcosms. But I guess that's the story of London, a city of microcosms. By foot we can access Waitrose (an upscale Whole Foods type market) Iceland and Morrison's (two averaged priced super markets) and tiny Indian and Arabic markets and stalls where you can buy everything from kitchenware to clothes to huge bags of spices and produce for hardly any money. I think we'll be covered for all our culinary and shopping needs. :)

We've also ventured into central London on several occasions the last few days. This weekend was the end of summer festival on the Thames, meaning two full days of food, vendors, performances, and one massive fireworks show Sunday night. I think it's the most fireworks I have every seen! We've explored all the old book stores on Charing Cross Road (reminds me of CityLights in SF), walked through Carneby Road (now gentrified), explored the endless maze of industrial horse stalls turned bohemian stalls in Camden, noshed on delicious sausage and caramelized onion sandwiches at the Borough Market underneath the train tracks just south of the river, and had drinks with some of Boyfriend's Spanish friends in a downstairs Chinatown bar decked out in an old cathedral interior with Celtic quotes on the wall! The bus system has proven cheaper and more convenient than the tube, because we have bus stops 50 yards from our house that take us straight to Trafalgar Square and Bloomsbury, where my school is! We're slowly getting our bearings in this massive metropolis and have learned to avoid certain touristy areas (Leicester Square) between 5 and 10 pm, which become a sea of drunken debauchery, like something straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting! Haha!

Now that we have made peace with our jetlag and are slightly oriented with our neighborhoods, we are settling into more serious things, like starting to study, write, and make our bright and creaky flat home. I've bought some potted herbs for our window sill in our kitchen: thyme, parsley, basil, and cilantro (coriander). The leaky faucet (tap) has provided the perfect drip system for the herbs! :) And just today I bought the ingredients needed to make some good old fashioned chocolate chip cookies! We still have lots of things to get, but having all the basic kitchen wares from David has made all the difference and we are making our own meals in the kitchen. I can't wait to use the oven tonight for the cookies (biscuits).

Today has been the first day of rain and the air has gotten a bit colder. But it is a very gentle and peaceful kind of rain; it feels as if the fall (autumn) is here and summer said goodbye with the fireworks on Sunday. We plan to see another play at the Globe this week, where you can pay 5 pounds to stand as a groundling right in front of the stage! Their season comes to a close at the end of this month, so we're trying to sneak in as many shows as possible. While standing, looking up at the actors in their period costumes, it feels like we've really stepped back into history. But then a big airplane flies over the open air roof, and I'm reminded of my place and time in modern day London. There is such a wonderful collision of history and modernity, cultures, languages, fashion, and art here. I am looking forward to the next year with great anticipation. I can hardly wait to experience it all and recount it all in emails.

Thank you for all of your emails! Keep staying in touch and come and visit!!!! Hope all is well in sunny California! Miss everyone so much!!!

Much love,

Emily

Beginning of a new chapter: LONDON!

It has been quite a long time since my last post and my life has gone in a new direction. I have left the world of restaurant cooking and have enrolled in a Master's degree program in the UK to study the Anthropology of Food!! And so the purpose of this blog has slightly changed from simply musing about pastries and food, to sharing with my loved ones back home the adventures, challenges, and discoveries I experience in this metropolis called London! Read as little or as much as you want, but mostly, look at the pictures, because if there's one thing more satisfying than eating a warm, gooey berry cobbler with homemade vanilla bean ice cream, it is looking at a picture of it!

So here goes: the next chapter in my love affair with food! Cheers!