Dinner is Served

Imagine a romantic dinner for two, candle light, fine wine and excellent food. Now imagine it served on paper plates and plastic cups. The point being that the vessels in which food is served are vital to the enjoyment of the meal.




A dinner plate, for example, is not just a flat thing to chuck food on. Yes, it needs a flat surface so that the cuisine can be displayed on it, but it also needs depth so that any liquids don't just run off.





The rim becomes a frame, I add a feather mark being blown around the edge of the plate, and the change of direction leading up to it assists in the mechanics of getting the food onto your eating implements. The rim rises above the table so that the plate can be lifted and carried easily.








Glaze colour helps to frame and compliment the food, sometimes adding contrast, sometimes harmony. The surface must be smooth and flat so that knives and forks can be used without unpleasant grating on rough textures, clattering on throwing rings or screeching across glassy surfaces. The total effect my not be so obtrusive as to take away from the food itself.





Nor is it merely the upper surface that must be considered. Stability is determined by the breadth of the foot ring and the total weight of the plate. The foot ring must be smooth so as not to scratch your lovely antique dining table, and the underside needs to be glazed for easy washing. It must fit in you dish rack and be easy to pick up, even if it is wet and upside down.

I include a double foot ring to eliminate warpage during firing, and decorate the outer area with chattering, while signing the centre with my initials, EC.





A stamp on the outside of the foot ring marks the work as mine, and the wild boar stamp beside it identifies it as being made in 2007, the year of the boar. Finally it must stack in the cupboard without taking too much space, and be durable enough for everyday use.




All of these considerations and more go into the design of the humble dinner plate. Of course the food you serve and the company with whom you enjoy it are the most crucial factor in the making of a dinner plate, whether in your own home or at your favorite restaurant. Whether it is a Chinese banquet, or pasta made with fresh tomatoes, eggplant and rosemary from the garden.

Goblets

The first time I ever saw a potter working was in about 1975 on a school trip to Bendigo Pottery. Yes, like every other child who ever saw a professional thrower at work, I thought it was magical. I bought my first pot that day, a wood fired salt glaze wine goblet. It had a solid stem, thrown in one piece, and was heavy as lead. In 1983, when I was working as a demonstration thrower for Bendigo Pottery, I discovered that the wheels had only two speeds, flat out and stop. Which is why all the pots were thick and heavy, anything less and the torque would have turned everything baroque.



Today, I am finishing off a run of my own wine goblets. I throw them in two parts and join them so that the stems are hollow and the finished work is light and comfortable to hold.

Tall and elegant, the stems are thin and care must be taken not to twist them.



When all is said and done, I come full circle time and again, and like the growth rings of a tree, every previous cycle is part of who I have become. I'm making wood fired soda glazed wine goblets, very different to the one I bought all those years ago, but to the little boy that lingers inside me there is still something magical about them.

Back in the Kitchen

The heart of any home is the kitchen. The source of warmth and life and nourishment. The other day we found a cast iron slow combustion stove at a rock bottom price. It has always been my dream to bake bread, scones, cakes, casseroles, roasts, pies and pastries by the heat of a wood fire in my own home. When I was a child I would help mum or Aunty Thora to stoke the stove, bake the scones, even clean the chimney when necessary. Sitting in the warmth of the hearth with the fragrance of wood fire and baking bread is one of my fondest memories.

Today I replaced the table top of our kitchen table. About fifteen year ago I made the table to fit into the kitchen of my home in Utsunomiya, but when we moved back to Mashiko it wouldn't fit into the kitchen and I had to cut it down to size. It was heart breaking, but even as tears welled in my eyes I took the saw to it. At last I have returned it to it's original size. I had to dowell several planks together to get the breadth.

Using iron oxide to stain the wood I finished it with mahogany oil to have the same feeling as traditional japanese furniture.

Yesterday, when I was bottling the lager, Sean, our youngest came and "helped", holding the syphon hose with me. When he grows to be a man, will he too look back and reminisce about bottling beer with dad, helping to bring wood in for the fire, sitting at the table that daddy made, sharing these simple joys with his family? I hope so.

Stormy Breakfast

Today the kids were home from school because of Typhoon 9, which ripped straight up the middle of honshu. While the winds outside gusted up to 54.6 metres per second (about 196km/hr!) and the torrential rain pelted on the storm shutters, I made dropscones for breakfast. Dropscones get called "pancakes", "hotcakes" and a variety of other names by other families. This has occasionally been cause for confusion in breakfast decisions with non family members! Mum passed away before I was able to get her dropscone recipe, but over the years I have developed my own.
The local green grocer had lemons from the neighbouring town for sale the other day. I didn't know we could grow lemons in this climate, but now that I do we plan to plant some in the near future! We had lemons in the garden in Australia when I was young and Mum taught me how to make Lemon Butter (some people call it Lemon Curd). It's only right that I should pass this on to my children. Of course I needed to teach them how to make butter first!


BUTTER

500ml pure cream, preferably a few days old
3gm salt

Put the cream into an airtight jar with plenty of space to spare. Shake it like crazy until it separates into butter and buttermilk. This is a perfect job for children! Drain the buttermilk off through a cloth and save it for later use. Wash the remaining buttermilk out of the butter by "squodging" it in a bowl of fresh water. Drain off the water again through a cloth, then return the butter to the bowl and add the salt, mixing thoroughly. Store in the fridge. This quantity should yeild 200gm of butter and 280ml of buttermilk, as some is lost in the draining, washing and tasting process.


LEMON BUTTER

3 large lemons
375gm sugar
125gm butter
3 large eggs

Finely grate the rind of the lemons. Put this in a double basin over a low heat with the juice of the three lemons, the butter and the sugar and stir till all the sugar is dissolved. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture over the heat, stirring constantly. When the mixture thickens pour it into warm sterilized jars and, when cool, store in the fridge.


DROPSCONES

3 large eggs
50gm sugar
50ml olive oil
150ml buttermilk
200gm plain flour
8gm Royal baking powder

Separate the eggs into two bowls. Into the bowl with the yolks mix the sugar, oil and buttermilk, beating it till the sugar is dissolved. Beat in the flour and the baking powder. I specify Royal baking powder as some other brands contain Alum.
Beat the egg whites until they form peaks. Fold the beaten egg whites gently into the rest of the batter mixture.
Grease a large non stick frypan with a little olive oil and heat it over a low flame. Drop about 30ml of the mixture per dropscone into the frypan and cook till golden on the underside. Flip the dropscone and cook the other side until it is golden. Serve with a dollop of Lemon Butter and a curl of chilled butter.

Being completely self sufficient just isn't practical for us, but that's not really my objective. What I want to share with my family is a simple, wholesome, healthy and sustainable lifestyle. The kids get a real buzz out of enjoying food that they have made themselves, and todays breakfast was a classic example. Home made butter, lemon butter and dropscones, served on my own plates, safe and sheltered from the storm outside.

Worth Bottling

I taught the children how to bottle beer today. I've been making home brew for many years, and have memories of helping my father brew and bottle when I was a child. Of course I still remain chief cook and bottle washer.

Canaan and Sora took turns filling the bottles with a syphon tube from the fermenter. By Japanese law home brew beer must be below 1% alcohol, so were very careful not to make it too strong!




Sora helped with capping the bottles with crown seals. The beer will be perfect for drinking next month for the kiln building and firing workshops here in Mashiko.

Quality Control

The most important thing for a functional potter, as opposed to a dysfunctional potter, to do is to use their own pots. It is only in the process of using a pot, serving with it, receiving from it, washing it up afterwards and putting it away, that you can really understand whether it is functional or not. That is why the first thing which I do with new pots fresh from the kiln is select a cross section and take them straight to the kitchen for testing. And so it was that this morning we indulged once more in delicious cappuchino. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it!



After a long hot day, of course, there is nothing more strenuous than having to test beer cups. The cups have been in the freezer for an hour, the beer is on ice along with some cucumbers fresh from the garden. Sitting on the engawa waiting for Mika to join me, I watch the children playing in the garden.


It doesn't get much better than this, and you can't get more functional than that. I love quality control!

Hot Mugs

Finally fired the mugs on wednesday!
Firing a wood kiln in midsummer is exhausting, even for me. 33 degrees in the shade, and the only shade is near the kiln, which is 1300 degrees. The biggest danger is dehydration, although heat exhaustion comes a close second.





It's not long before you're saturated with persperation, hoping for a breeze. Once again Sean keeping an eye on things.



Luckily there's a bath tub full of cool water to chill out in if your small enough. Unfortunately Daddy isn't.


Today I unpacked the kiln and lined the pots out on the lawn. Excellent pink and orange flashing on many of them, beautiful grey carbon trapping on others.


But best of all the long awaited mugs. I know that many people have been waiting for them, and they have come out perfect. We'll just give them time to cool down before we fill them with beer, shall we?