A Spirit of Place -- The Ethicurean

 Over at Cookbook Of The Day we decided that The Ethicurean Cookbook was our favorite cookbook of the year, maybe of the coming year, too!  We just love it.  The Ethicurean was voted one of the ten best destination restaurants in England.

Recently, Cereal magazine and Freunde von Freunde published an interview with The Ethicurean's Jack Adair Bevan and a series of glorious photos.  Both the interview and the photos are by Robbie Lawrence. The photos are food porn of the highest order.  These are just a few.  Needless to say, we want to live there.

Do read the full interview and check out both sites to see all the photos.

Cereal.

Freunde von Freunde.

God Save The Queen

Last week I got a package in the mail from England.  It was a large package but it was very light.  I could tell from the writing that it was from my friend, Sandra.  The customs form stated "Mould." 

Usually packages from Sandra arrive at my behest.  I have ordered something in England that could(would) not be shipped by the seller.  Sandra dutifully gathers my packages and sends them on to me.   This package was a surprise.


When I opened it, I had to laugh.  Enclosed was indeed a mould.  A bright, pink mould of Queen Elizabeth's head.  Definitely something to add to the "20 Things You Don't Need in a Kitchen."  When I told Sandra the Queen had arrived, she said she laughed out loud when she saw it and had to buy it for someone.


 I was the one.

Spotted Dick

Having a reputation for being a good cook and baker, I often take requests. Recently, I received one from my friend Barbara. It would seem that Barbara's father spent many a delightful year in English boarding schools. As a child, she remembered that he spoke fondly of of a favorite pudding, spotted dick. Recently a friend mentioned spotted dick and Barbara thought it would be an excellent birthday gift for him and she enlisted my help.

Here is a bit of Spotted Dick history...

Now we all know the British speak a form of English often known as "the Queen's English" which varies from American English. One big variation is the use of the word "pudding." For Americans "pudding" is that stuff we get from Bill Cosby and Jello. For the Brits a "pudding" or "pud" is a synonymous with our word, "dessert." So when a Brit tells you they have a lovely pudding, it might be a cake, or cookie or ice cream or spotted dick.

A spotted dick is a steamed suet pudding, studded with currants and boiled in a cloth.



The first true recipe for spotted dick can be found in 1850 in Alexis Soyer's, The Modern Housewife. However, identical recipes for the dish can be found as far back as the late 1600's.

The spotted part of the dish is easy see since it is "spotted" throughout with currants.

The "dick" is much debated. Some linguists believe that the word "dick" was a colloquial term for "pudding" at least four hundred years ago. Some feel it is a corruption of the word "pudding" which was oft pronounced "puddick" and thus, "dick." "Dick" was also used to mean a hard cheese and also a leather apron, among other uses. No one knows how "dick" became slang for "penis" but it seems to have originated around 1890 with the British army possibly because a riding whip was called a "dick" and the handle bore a resemblance to the male member. So it would seem that spotted dick didn't start to garner giggles until nearly a half-century after Soyer first published his recipe.

I set out to find an authentic recipe and I looked no farther than that bastion of English history, Upstairs, Downstairs. I knew that Mrs. Bridges would know better than anyone how to make a spotted dick. She did not disappoint and soon I had my recipe. Mrs Bridges notes that,

"Recently, the pudding has been accorded middle-class airs with raisins and sultana set in a light sponge."

She would not recognize such a confection as a true English spotted dick. After considerable boiling, the spotted dick is served with a bit of custard. For Barbara's present, I included a couple of cans of Devon Custard as I am a fine baker but not the best custard maker.



By all accounts, the present was a huge hit and yes, every dick joke out there was made. I heard they actually ate it, smothered in custard like perfect boarding school fare.

Romantic Moderns

Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris is a wonderful book. I can't offer a bigger recommendation, especially to the readers of Lucindaville. This is one of those books that came up while searching for other books. It purported to be a study of English modernism which some would argue is an oxymoron. The official title is Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper.

John Piper, Painting, 1935

It is a rather scholarly tome and was a bit hard to find. I had ordered it several times only to find it was out of stock. After several months I found a copy in England that came after four weeks a bit worse for wear from its' journey. It is beautifully bound on heavy stock and filled with photos. Harris' premise is that while modernism was often a violent break with the past, English Modernism saw the "modern" as not the least bit at odds with the its past.


While the title of the books mentions artists and writers, Harris takes a much broader, inclusive approach to a cultural history. She looks at "writers and artists" who wrote not only poetry and fiction, but writers who wrote about food and gardens and travel.

Illustration from Mrs. Beeton's Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book, 1890

Starting with the ever present Mrs. Beeton and her tarted up "European" recipes, Harris points out that painter Roger Fry was fascinated by regional food and often "carried around with him a huge Provencal cooking pot." Interest in food became less about the grandiose Victorian feasts and more about the one-pot meals from the English countryside.

Geoffrey Jellicoe's baroque garden at Ditchley Park, 1934-1939

When Ronald and Nancy Tree decided to redesign the gardens at their home, Ditchley Park they chose Geoffery Jellicoe. Jellicoe took his visions of Italy and moulded them into the English countryside working to bring "history and the modern 'psyche' into alliance."

Rex Whistler Clovelly Chintz, 1932

There are nods to Cecil Beaton's Ashcombe and the fascination with baroque and rococo. Rex Whistler took inspiration from the Cornish fishing village of Clovelly which became, "a toile-de-jouy fabric with cherub-edged capriccios and fountains of Neptune."

Writers abound. The Bloomsbury clan is here. W. H Auden mixes with Evelyn Waugh. The Sitwells make appearances.

Bill Brandt Edith and Osbert Sitwell, 1945

Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell continued the English tradition of landscapes and still life but with a decidedly modern twist.

Duncan Grant A Sussex Farm, 1936

Angus McBean incorporated high Victorian decoration into surrealism displaying celebrity as curio.

Angus McBean Beatrice Lillie 'Surrealised', 1940

Harris' broad and sweeping survey of this period in English history beautifully draws together disparate threads and weaves them into a cultural tapestry. The book is well worth the price for the images alone, be it gardens, architecture, design, paintings, and photography, they fill the pages and clearly prove her point that the English were modernists tinged with their own eccentric flair.