A deep dive into the White Stuff
Recipe: Apple & Lemon Canterbury Tart
Milk is a highly politicised product, 'provoking strong opinions and vivid memories. Our responses range from delight to disgust,' according to the exhibition catalogue for MILK, an exhibition currently being held at the Wellcome Collection in north London (see details below). I've recently visited the show and can recommend a visit. It's split into five themes, including Scientific Motherhood, The Cost of Milk and Good Health, with displays using old advertisements, videos, art installations and a delightful vitrine packed with cream and milk jugs.
While cow's milk is the most widely drunk, humans harvest the liquid from goats, sheep, camels, donkeys, buffalo, reindeer, yaks and horses.
So what do the curators of this exhibition want to tell us? Perhaps that milk is a tool to exert power and control and provide nutrition, particularly breast milk, the first food we humans consume. Some of the questions Wellcome pose include how do we value milk and those who produce it? What unseen forces shape how we feed our babies, and how has milk been used to tie health ideas to whiteness?
The exhibition doesn't touch on issues such as the various scandals across Africa and China involving powdered milk and high-pressured sales techniques or whether an emulsion of oats, milk and a long list of highly processed emulsifiers and preservatives can really be called milk!
Milk is a divisive subject, with such foods often used by a government's economic and political interests while vying with perceived health benefits. Marketers talk of milk being natural, despite the many industrial processes needed to get it to our breakfast tables.
As a schoolboy in the late 1960s, I enjoyed a glass of milk at school, handed out to all children of primary school age (five years to 11) by the government's Ministry of Health. Here are three key dates that surround this political activity:
1937 - research led by John Boyd Orr (a Scottish doctor and biologist and Noble Prize winner, he led an incredible life of public service, read his Wikipedia biography here) highlighted the link between low income, malnutrition and under-achievement in schools. Pregnant women were also issued with free milk to prevent malnutrition bought on by wartime and post-war food shortages.
1946 - Britain's first female Education Minister, 'Red' Ellen Wilkinson, shepherded the Free Milk Act into law. Free milk to all British schoolchildren in the publicly-funded state system.
1968 - free milk was abolished in secondary schools, and in 1971 amid an economic crisis, the then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher MP ended free school milk for children over seven years of age. This earned her the nickname of 'Thatcher, Thatcher Milk Snatcher'.
Memories of school milk and daily deliveries of silver(whole milk) and gold (extra creamy) topped glass bottles on my family's home doorstep and queuing for a glug of milk at school with milky moustaches, a common sight that remains vivid.
With memories in mind, I visited Milk, an exhibition curated by the Wellcome Collection in London. Wellcome is a well-funded foundation that offers a free museum exploring health and the human experience.
Their vision is to 'challenge how we all think and feel about health by connecting science, medicine, life and art'. They do this through exhibitions, a museum, a library and, of course, a cafe and shop. Its customers are very different from the crowd in the nearby Starbucks. Here they look academic and studious. Many have lanyards and ID cards swinging from their necks: academic types and enthusiastic students chatting in boisterous groups with serious intent.
The shop sells popular science books. Cuddly microbes, any number of skulls and miniature human skeletons, and chocolate body parts and blood-bath shower gel are for sale.
Milk
The Wellcome Collection
30 March - 10 September 2023
APPLE & LEMON CANTERBURY TART
The origins of this tart are lost to the mists of time with some cooks offering references to Geoffrey Chaucer and his book ‘The Canterbury Tales’. However, the recipe includes lemon zest and juice, fruit that was unknown to British palettes at the time of writing in the late 14th Century. This dish is based on a recipe from cookery writer and Great British Bakeoff host, Mary Berry. Key ingredients for the filling are grated apple and lemon filling with the top decorated with sliced apple. Delicious!
Kitchen tip: As with all recipes, read through before you start cooking so you don’t get any unwelcome surprises!
Serves 8
Pastry:
100g butter, cut in to 1 cm chunks
225g plain flour, sifted
25g icing sugar, sifted
1 egg, beaten
A little iced water, if needed
Filling:
4 eggs
225g caster sugar
2 lemons, zest and juice
100g butter, melted
2 large cooking apples (Granny Smith, Bramley, or similar), cored & quartered
2 eating apples, cored, unpeeled, and sliced
25g sugar, Demerara or raw cane crystals
You’ll need:
A 25cm flan tin
Bowl of chilled water with a squeeze of lemon to keep the sliced apple fresh
To Do:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
If making pastry by hand, rub the butter into the flour and icing sugar until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the beaten egg. Combine to form a dough.
If you’re using a food processor to make the pastry combine the flour, butter and icing sugar in the bowl then add the egg and mix until the dough starts to form.
Shape the pastry into a smooth ball, wrap in plastic and before chilling in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Roll out the pastry and line the flan tin, leaving an overhang.
Return the tin to the fridge for a further 30 minutes (or longer if you need to).
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs, caster sugar, lemon rind and juice.
Stir in the melted butter.
Grate the cooking apples straight into the bowl using a coarse grater.
Slice eating apples, place in a bowl of chilled water with a squeeze of lemon juice, to prevent browning.
Stir in the cooking apples.
Pour the apple mixture into the flan tin, before levelling the surface and arranging the dessert on the surface, neatly overlapping.
Lastly, sprinkle Demerara sugar over the topping.
Place on a tray (to catch any bubbling overflow) in the oven and bake for about 40-50 minutes, until the centre feels firm and the apples slices are gently caramelised.
Serve hot or cold with cream, crème fraîche or perhaps custard.
BRUCE & THE LEMON GROVE’S EVENTS DIARY
Hosting the Demonstration Stage at:
Tonbridge Farmers Market (every second Sunday of the month, 9.30 - 1.30)
Next market in Tonbridge, Kent is on Sunday August 13.
Aylesford Farmers Market (every third Sunday of the month, 9.30 - 1.30)
Next market in Aylesford, Kent is on Sunday August 20.
I'll be sharing recipe ideas using food from the farmers market and interviewing many great local growers and producers making wine, bread, jams, marmalade, and much more. Follow Tonbridge Farmers Market for updates.
CREATIVE WRITING INSPIRED BY NATURE
Tunbridge Wells, Kent. September 7 & 14 . 10.30am - 12.30am.
In this course you will learn how to write about nature, food, wildlife, plants and harness the magic of the changing seasons. Everything will start with observations, discussions and how to translate your thoughts into a compelling piece of writing. Click this link for more information and to book your place.
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Bruce McMichael
Writer, Podcaster, Educator
Website: www.thelemongrove.net
Twitter: @lemonbites
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