Tea time: The South Street Pantry ****

Going for tea happens to be one of my most favourite pleasantries and for this reason i've decided to keep a collection of excellent tea rooms as a kind of review.  The South Street Pantry tea experience is beautiful from start to finish.  The assortment of kitch little vintage teapots, cups, saucers and milk jugs get me each time. The tea, as described by a friend on his first visit, "is the best tea ever tasted."  I would have to agree!  The tea sells for £2.20 a pot and comes in a range of fresh leaf kinds:

• Assam
• Camomile
• Earl Grey
• Early Grey Rose Petal
• English Breakfast
• Ginger 
• Green
• Gunpowder
• Lapsang
• Lemon Verbena
• Masala Chai
• Oolong
• Pantry Morrocan Mint
• Roobios
• Lemon and Ginger 

Now, they do make scones, devonshire cream, and standard pantry afternoon teas to accompany the leaves and water which are delicious, but I have to confess that on more than one occasion I have ordered the American blueberry pancakes. At first I thought it was sacrilege to serve something quite so un-British in what is essentially an English tearoom.  Little more needs to be said besides that the pancakes are very tasty and actually go pretty well with tea! 

See morning and afternoon menus online here. 

I'm a big into cake kind of a person so it thrills me that all of South Streets cakes are lovingly made on site.  These cakes are not just your usual carrot, walnut, chocolate, lemon or victoria sponge.  It's clear that a huge amount of imagination has gone into creating some of these one of a kind cakes... 

In addition to the great food and drink, the pantry runs a knit and craft club at 2pm on Tuesdays and will help to make special occasions just that.

 

Overall there is a great atmosphere, good alternative menus, fresh, homemade, good quality food, reasonable prices and excellent service.

Arabia Teapot Made in Finland by Ulla Procope

It was meant to be...

Last weekend I popped into a local charity shop to make a donation and on my way out a tea pot caught my eye.  It was marked Arabia, made in Finland and priced at £3.50. It was in perfect condition, but the queue was long and I was in a hurry so left it behind.  I didn't know anything about the maker just that I loved the look of the Scandinavian design.  Today I travelled past the same shop and decided to stop by.  I didn't think for one minute that the tea pot would still be there but needed to check. Well... to my surprise it was and here it is...

Once home, I researched a little and found out that it is designed by Ulla Procope in 1953 for Arabia Finland. Arabia is a Finnish ceramics company, founded in 1873, and currently owned by Fiskars.  It specialises in kitchenware and tableware. 

Above is an image of the original Arabia porcelain factory located in Toukola (Helskini.) It continues to be one of Fiskars Corporation's production centres. 

A little more searching led me to find this version in black which sold most recently on Ebay on the 6th January 2013 for £73.45! See here. I just about fell off my chair.  

Well as much as I love this tea pot I had no idea that it was quite such a valuable piece.  I've decided to put it up on Ebay and see what kind of response this little pot above gets.  Perhaps someone else will love it just as much as me!

...I really have always loved tea.

Traditional English Scones - When in America...

Whilst growing up I was taught a mixture of measuring systems.  Then I met an American.  I'm now stuck somewhere between using the metric and imperial system. I use millimetres, centimetres and metres to measure length from the metric system but miles from the imperial.  I use litres from the metric and pints from the imperial to measure capacity, and then milligrams, grams, kilograms stones and tons from the metric system and ounces and pounds from the imperial to measure mass.  I now recognise the temperature in celsius for the lower temperatures and fahrenheit for the higher.  I don't have much use for recognising that anything over 100f is a bit scorching in England! Then again I couldnt tell you what an average English summers day temperature is in fahrenheit.

Generally speaking i've adapted pretty well to my hybrid measuring system however I always become unstuck when it comes to translating US/UK recipes. 

Today I fancied making some scones! Here is my conversion for any Americans looking to make some traditional scones for an English tea! This recipe makes approximately 6-8 scones.

Ingredients: 

8 oz All purpose flour

2 tsp (heaped) baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

A little over 1 oz of caster sugar

1/2 a stick of butter

3/4 cup of milk (or just enough to create a firm dough)

To serve:

Butter

Jam

Cream

Method:

1. Heat oven to 350f.  Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar in a bowl, then rub the butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like bread crumbs.
2. Bit by bit, add the milk until you have a firm dough.  Turn out onto a floured work surface.  Pat the dough into a circle about 1 1/2 cm thick and cut out the scones with a circular cutter.
3. Put onto a non stick baking sheet and brush the tops with milk.  Bake for 12-15 minutes.  Serve with butter, or jam and cream.