High tea is a perfect celebration of all that is good and memorable about summer, and is a uniquely British offering in world cuisine.
Scandi tea: smoked salmon smore with cucumber slices in vinaigrette, berry and clove compote with cream and a tisane of sweet geranium.
Interestingly, the customs and joys of other countries have been contributing to the genre for some time now, expanding greatly what is offered and adding considerably to its global charm. With high tea on the menu at establishments all over the world, home cooks have also been making it their own and with no less creativity and elan.
Ever since I created a winter high tea some years ago - scones slathered with brandy butter and kirsch jam, and fruit jellies served with a large rosette of brandy cream and spiced hot chocolate - enjoyed by the fire, I’ve been successfully exploring other ‘takes’ on this festive menu, most recently the idea of a Scandi Tea.
Inspiration from the north rings the changes My first Scandi tea was Inspired by the classic German ‘Nordsee Frushtick’ (North Sea breakfast) which was much beloved Sunday brunch treat for our family during my teenage years when we lived in Germany: occasionally, and usually in celebration of a special event, we would make our way to a beautiful restaurant by a lake to enjoy a veritable banquet of the freshest ocean produce.
Alongside bowls of fruit and muesli, the main event was buttery scrambled eggs with a giant cartwheel of gorgeous, seeded rolls, to be torn off by hand as needed, and served with a platter of seafood including smoked salmon, prawns, mackerel, pickled herrings in sour cream with warm boiled potatoes. As if this was not enough, this was augmented further with yoghurt, conserves and fresh local cheeses, and served with mimosas and coffee. Imagine enjoying it while gazing at the glimmering waters beyond the window panes. It was a real feast for the senses.
My first Scandi tea consisted of full-corn bread, spread with herbed butter and draped with generous folds of smoked salmon, which had been marinated in lemon juice. This smore was then endowed with a crown of lemon cream; and followed followed by a rich berry compote, rich with actual fruit inside, and smothered with a deep layer of vanilla bourbon scented sour cream. The whole affair was then served with tisane of lemon verbena or sweet geranium from my garden.
One of my greatest joys in life is to surprise people, not so much with the elements of a meal, but with how ingredients around them are combined together to forge new and different flavour notes. This is where an ordinary or well-known dish can be elevated or taken to the next level, and your guests, if they are open-minded, may join you in this culinary journey. For instance: smoked salmon, herbed butter and compote and cream are no doubt well known to all of us as individual items, but serving them together as a cream tea is something different.
Adapting a recipe to the season
Similarly, the ingredients for my boozey winter high tea - scones, brandy butter, kirsch jam and so on - are all common items in a supermarket before and around Xmas time, but putting them all together in an afternoon tea was an eye-opener and it bought a note of luxurious pleasure to that Sunday. I have trialled it with guests since and it got the same surprise and delight from them too, so I urge you to try these things or ideas of your own to vary and widen your culinary repertoire and also increase the fun you can have in your kitchen.
Using heritage to vary a menu
Perhaps you come from the Middle East or Asia and can supply some unique foods from there - what about tagine sandwiches, smothered in slow-cooked lamb and spiced apricots puree, puff pastry tartiette stuffed with Imam Baildi and topped with crumbled cheese, all followed with a millefeuille pastry layered with fig and barberry jam and rose-scented cream? It is a myth to believe you have to have a lot of elements to make an impression. You don’t. Any Michelin starred chef will be more than happy to eat a two course meal - a hearty beef stew and apple pie - the key is to do it well and avoid being over-confident.
The destruction of over-confidence
The worst meal we ever had was in a student bistro in Belgium, where the chef did not understand how to temper his creativity to forge something workable. The menu item ‘Pork Blackwell’ was a well-intended dish designed to combine local pork with some kind of sweet and sour sauce, we guessed afterwards, or perhaps just a sour sauce.
The flavour combination of sweet and sour sauce with pork can work extremely well, as any fan of Chinese cuisine will know, but in this case we discovered the ‘Blackwell’ element did not refer to the chef’s name, but rather it consisted of an entire jar of Cross & Blackwell’s piccalilli unceremoniously dumped on top of a pork steak which had been cooked to within an inch of its life. In fact, so rubbery was the meat that it could happily have formed a replacement for the lost petrol cap of a jerry can ….and as for the pickles, well quite what makes anyone think that harpic*-scented crunchy vegetables would make a pleasing accompaniment to any meat beats me. Apologies to piccalilli fans. Note: I have since found a recipe for piccalilli which makes me think that picallili could be made to taste well....we shall see! Look out for more on this.
The boon of simplicity
On the other hand, it is possible to pull a blinder with such mixing and matching, if you keep it simple: in the early days of my career, I wished to work my way up the ladder into a managerial position, and so needed to dress the part. Although I wanted the focus to be on my ideas and not on how I looked, I recognised that one could easily undo a good impression if one’s dress did not match the niveau of one’s thinking, so I always dressed aspirationally, even when I was a junior. A mentor once said to me “Always dress slightly beyond your audience”, but as I knew I did not have the funds for this, I thought I might be able to at least nod in that direction.
Therefore, working with a very limited budget, instead of buying 3 suits and as a result only ever having 3 looks to wear to work, as many of my female colleagues were doing, every two years I would shopping to reputable stores like John Lewis, Marks & Spencer or the then Principles, to buy 2 single-colour jackets, 3 skirts, 4 blouses and a series of scarves and necklaces from a good store - and proceed to mix and match. Nothing in the selection would have stood out to anyone initially - in fact everything in my selection looked quite plain - but as a creative person I was able to dress well and imaginatively for months on end with these pieces, and I did that successfully for the best part of 14 years.
It is this thinking which underpins this blog.
Adapting classics to create surprises
I adore classics because they never fall out of fashion, and there are literally millions of such dishes to try, learn and serve, so one will never run out of inspiration or pathways to take, but the challenge for me as a creative person lies in varying some of them, without betraying the original thinking behind them, so I don’t get bored and maintain my own interest while cooking favourites for my family and friends.
Normally high tea is incredibly labour-intensive - consisting of several types of sandwich, scones, pastries and cakes - all of which, in an ideal world, have to be made fresh. Most experienced hosts know this is only possible if you have lorry loads of staff at hand, or if everything has been made before, and so insist on advanced reservations to ensure that nothing runs out and service can run smoothly from start to finish.
A stitch in time...!
The blessing of my Scandi tea, however, is that it is very easy to make and does not consist of too many elements. The herbed butter, scented cream and marinaded salmon are incredibly easy to make; the flavoured jellies can be made the day before - in fact the jelly will actually benefit from it - leaving only three short tasks to do on the day of service itself: plating up the sandwich, whipping the cream for the jellies and making the tisane, and the latter two can be done in large quantities, so are very much single rather than repeated actions.
Menues to suit time and energy levels
When planning a menu always choose dishes which suit your energy levels and the time you have available. As I have said before elsewhere on this blog, there is nothing more deflating than to be served a lovely meal by a hostess who is too exhausted to enjoy it because it will leave the guests feeling guilty. No-one wants to dine with a martyr, so plan wisely and you too will have fun despite the work you are doing.
After reading the recipe here, do check out the notes below it because they contain suggestions for drinks that you can serve, including cranberry vodka and a home-made snowball. Though I say so myself, they are all super yummy.
Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 10 mins
Ingredients
4 slices full-corn bread 100g butter
Chopped dill, chives and lemon thyme
Salt and pepper
Zest and juice of 2 organic, unwaxed lemons
1 cucumber
Vinaigrette dressing
400g smoked salmon
400g whipping cream
2 tsp icing sugar
1 packet redcurrant jelly cubes
400g fresh fruit berries of your choice (I like plums the best, but anything like cherries, blackberries and apple, lingonberries, boysenberries or others would work as well)
1/2 red fruit juice (redcurrant, plum, sour cherry or lingonberry)
½ pint water
2 pinches powdered cloves
Handful of sweet geranium leaves
Method
To make the herbed butter
1-Allow the butter to come to room temperature until it is entirely soft.
2-Add the chopped herbs, and a pinch of salt and pepper and stir together well.
3-Place this in the fridge until needed. Then remove it 30mins ti soften a little to a spreading consistency before you serve tea.
To marinade the salmon
1-Layer the salmon in a dish with half of the lemon juice and chopped herbs, and a pinch of salt and pepper (go easy on the salt as smoked salmon can be salty, or leave it out entirely).
2-Place it in the fridge to marinade for a few hours or overnight.
To make the lemon-scented cream for the salmon
1-Whip the whipping cream and put 1/3 of it into a small bowl.
2-Add the zest and a dash of juice from one of the two lemons, some salt and pepper, and stir well. Then set this aside in your fridge.
3-Pour the rest of the cream into a different bowl and put this into the fridge too.
To make the cucumber in vinaigrette
1-Slice the cucumbers, leaving the skin on - it provides a lovely colour note.
2-Mix vinaigrette with chopped herbs.
3-Layer the cucumber slices in a dish and drizzle with vinaigrette and choppped herbs.
4-Place this in the fridge for few hours before serving.
To make the berry and clove jelly
1-Place the packet of jelly cubes in a large jug, add ½ pint of warm water and stir this to melt the jelly cubes.
2-Mix the fruit with a couple of spoons of water and sugar. Then add the cloves and warm this up until everything is amalgamated (the fruit should retain its shape so do not overstir this or stir it too vigorously).
3-Add the fruit to the liquid containing the melted jelly cubes until you have made up at least 1pint of liquid, then set this aside for 10mins to cool a little.
4-Stir this and add sugar to taste, as needed, before it sets.
4-Allow the jelly to cool and before it sets, pour it into the glasses or chalices of your choice - whisky tumbles make wonderful hosts for this - and place them in your fridge to set. Do not add alcohol to the fruit - it changes the setting temperature of the jelly. I once did this and had to use 5 packets of jelly cubes to get it to set. It took me four or five attempts to get it to set!
To make the tisane
1-Place a handful of gently washed lemon verbena leaves into a teapot.
2-Pour fizzing hot water onto the leaves and stir. Then set on a teapot warmer to keep it hot.
3-Steep for at least 8mins before serving.
To serve
1-Spread the herbed butter on the bread, and drape with a generous helping of the marinaded smoked salmon. You can drizzle extra lemon juice over it too. Then top with a spoon of the lemon cream.
2-Just before serving the tea, whip the remainder of the cream and decorate the jellies with a large spoonful or a rosette (you will need piping equipment for this).
3-Make the tisane - place flowers and/or herbs in your teapot and pour sizzling water ontop. Carry this to the table and advise your guests to let it steep for at least 8mins before drinking.
4-Serve your smores on pretty china or Scandinavian glassware, as in my picture.
Notes
1-You can serve any kind of aperitif, liqueur or even Acquavit with this, depending on what you feel your guests will like. Our favourites are hazelnut and/or orange liqueurs, or a freezing cold, home-made snowball.
2-To make a snowball: pour one measure of blackcurrant cordial and one measure of advocaat onto crushed ice, then top with fizzy lemonade and stir. Heaven in a glass!
3-Make your own cranberry vodka: stir up to two large cups of icing sugar in a litre of cranberry juice and warm this until it reduces down to 500ml. Then allow to cool and place in a decanter. Its beautiful rose colour will really enhance the beauty of your table.
*Harpic is a toilet cleaner.
***bon appetit***
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