Thanks for the link to the 'Tea in Tolkien's 'The Hobbit'' I'm enjoying that!
I've made my own yogurt before.. which.. although putzy it's really quite simple. SO I looked up to see if I could find a recipe for clotted cream.
How Did This Clotted Cream Recipe Compare to Store-Bought Clotted Cream?
I bought some English Luxury Clotted Cream and tasted mine alongside it. The texture was the same (like butter, but a bit creamier), however mine had a slightly sweeter, much fresher, and richer flavor. It was worlds better. There may be really amazing store-bought clotted cream options out there, but they are not readily available in St. Louis. The quality of your clotted cream, however, will depend on the quality of your heavy whipping cream, which brings me to my next section...
The Difficult Parts of Making Clotted Cream
There are two difficult parts to this clotted cream recipe:
Finding heavy whipping cream that isn't ultra-pasteurized. Clotting will work better with an unpasteurized or pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized) cream. I didn't try making the recipe with an ultra-pasteurized cream so I can't say for sure whether or not it would work, but I suspect it wouldn't work well. For more information on ultra-pasteurization, check out the FAQ from the New England Cheese Making Society (I know we aren't making cheese here, but the information found there is very helpful in explaining the problem with ultra-pasteurization). It is also best to look for heavy whipping cream with as high a fat content as you can find. I used a local brand, Pevely, that had 40% fat.
Waiting. The clotted cream was in my oven for so long that it shut itself off. This has never happened before, and I learned from the experience that our oven shuts off automatically at twelve hours.
Clotted Cream Recipe
I got the recipe for clotted cream from Sustainable Table. As I said above, there isn't much to it. There is only one ingredient: heavy whipping cream. Use as much as you would like. I used two pints (4 cups) - be sure to see my notes above about about not using ultra-pasteurized cream. The clotted cream can be stored in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. Use it to top scones, pancakes, toast, or in my case, high tea cupcakes (post coming soon).
Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed oven-safe pot. The cream should come up the side of the pot somewhere between one and three inches.
Cover the pot and put it in the oven on 180 F.
Leave the covered pot in the oven for at least 8 hours. My four cups took 12 hours (until my oven automatically turned off). You'll know it's done because there will be a thick yellowish skin above the cream, as shown above. That skin is the clotted cream.
Let the pot cool at room temperature, then put it in the refrigerator for another 8 hours.
Remove the clotted cream from the top of the pot. The cream that is underneath it can still be used for baking.
I am wondering if a crock-pot might be used instead of an oven. That's a long time to have an oven on.
I did learn long ago that "high tea" is really a meal, but the finer details given here are new to me. Thank you.
My experience has been like Prim's: breakfast, lunch, and supper, unless one of them is a big meal or a meal out, and by that I mean a sit-down meal with knives and forks. Sandwiches don't count; they're lunch or supper wherever they're eaten. So the one time we ate "dinner" at home when I was a kid was Sunday at midday (also on major holidays). Nowadays my husband and I will say, if we're going to sit down to a civilized plate while out, we're "going out to dinner," but if we're going to get fast food or sit down to sandwiches, we're "having supper out."
We don't have Sunday dinner anymore either. We have brunch.
While not precisely related, George Orwell wrote an essay, 'In Defence of English Cooking', published just after the end of WWII, with food rationing still in force, but looking back to the good points of English cooking, which I think has relevance to those who want to know what 'hobbit cooking' might resemble in real life:
George Orwell
In Defence of English Cooking
We have heard a good deal of talk in recent years about the desirability of attracting foreign tourists to this country. It is well known that England’s two worst faults, from a foreign visitor’s point of view, are the gloom of our Sundays and the difficulty of buying a drink.
Both of these are due of fanatical minorities who will need a lot of quelling, including extensive legislation. But there is one point on which public opinion could bring about a rapid change for the better: I mean cooking.
It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world. It is supposed to be not merely incompetent, but also imitative, and I even read quite recently, in a book by a French writer, the remark: ‘The best English cooking is, of course, simply French cooking.’
Now that is simply not true, as anyone who has lived long abroad will know, there is a whole host of delicacies which it is quite impossible to obtain outside the English-speaking countries. No doubt the list could be added to, but here are some of the things that I myself have sought for in foreign countries and failed to find.
First of all, kippers, Yorkshire pudding, Devonshire cream, muffins and crumpets. Then a list of puddings that would be interminable if I gave it in full: I will pick out for special mention Christmas pudding, treacle tart and apple dumplings. Then an almost equally long list of cakes: for instance, dark plum cake (such as you used to get at Buzzard’s before the war), short-bread and saffron buns. Also innumerable kinds of biscuit, which exist, of course, elsewhere, but are generally admitted to be better and crisper in England.
Then there are the various ways of cooking potatoes that are peculiar to our own country. Where else do you see potatoes roasted under the joint, which is far and away the best way of cooking them? Or the delicious potato cakes that you get in the north of England? And it is far better to cook new potatoes in the English way — that is, boiled with mint and then served with a little melted butter or margarine — than to fry them as is done in most countries.
Then there are the various sauces peculiar to England. For instance, bread sauce, horse-radish sauce, mint sauce and apple sauce; not to mention redcurrant jelly, which is excellent with mutton as well as with hare, and various kinds of sweet pickle, which we seem to have in greater profusion than most countries.
What else? Outside these islands I have never seen a haggis, except one that came out of a tin, nor Dublin prawns, nor Oxford marmalade, nor several other kinds of jam (marrow jam and bramble jelly, for instance), nor sausages of quite the same kind as ours.
Then there are the English cheeses. There are not many of them but I fancy Stilton is the best cheese of its type in the world, with Wensleydale not far behind. English apples are also outstandingly good, particularly the Cox’s Orange Pippin.
And finally, I would like to put in a word for English bread. All the bread is good, from the enormous Jewish loaves flavoured with caraway seeds to the Russian rye bread which is the colour of black treacle. Still, if there is anything quite as good as the soft part of the crust from an English cottage loaf (how soon shall we be seeing cottage loaves again?) I do not know of it.
No doubt some of the things I have named above could be obtained in continental Europe, just as it is possible in London to obtain vodka or bird’s nest soup. But they are all native to our shores, and over huge areas they are literally unheard of.
South of, say, Brussels, I do not imagine that you would succeed in getting hold of a suet pudding. In French there is not even a word that exactly translates ‘suet’. The French, also, never use mint in cookery and do not use black currants except as a basis of a drink.
It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go. And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor’s point of view. This is, that you practically don’t find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want, say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals.
It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English and which also sell good food are very hard to find. Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches. The expensive restaurants and hotels almost all imitate French cookery and write their menus in French, while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant. We are not likely to succeed in attracting tourists while England is thought of as a country of bad food and unintelligible by-laws. At present one cannot do much about it, but sooner or later rationing will come to an end, and then will be the moment for our national cookery to revive. It is not a law of nature that every restaurant in England should be either foreign or bad, and the first step towards an improvement will be a less long-suffering attitude in the British public itself.
1945
THE END
First published: Evening Standard. — GB, London. — December 15, 1945.
Reprinted:
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968. ____
