Workshop Report:
A Taste of Newfoundland:
From Tea Buns to Toutons
Thursday 19 March, 6.30pm
Icetank, 5-7 Grape Street, London WC2H 8DW
The title of this talk intrigued me from the outset – I am passionate about anything that calls itself a tea bun! I was intrigued to know what the Newfoundland and Labrador version might be like, and curious to understand the cooking, ingredients and recipes from a part of the world I have always been keen to learn more about.
Karen Burns-BoothI have travelled to the west coast of Canada on a number of occasions, and it is now populated by three generations of my mother’s family who emigrated to Vancouver in the 1960s. A childhood love of Anne of Green Gables, of Marilla’s larder filled with homemade cakes, jams and chutneys, and of the beautiful wild landscape of Northern Canada has meant that the area has always held an alluring appeal for me.
On the 19 March, I joined a group of intrepid Guild adventurers on a wonderfully memorable journey through the food, stories and charm of a nation populated by the most ‘scarily friendly’ people one could ever have the good fortune to meet! We were taken by the friendly and capable hand of Karen Burns-Booth through open (and always unlocked) doors into the warm and welcoming kitchens of Newfoundland. Karen made us feel so at home in her ‘kitchen’ as she stirred her mixture and baked tea buns that we could almost imagine we were waiting for the children to return from school and devour them slathered in jam and dripping with ‘Fussel’s Cream’!
We were soon to discover what else they were eating, but to wonder what made them this contented, friendly and happy? Perhaps it was being proud proprietors of the best lobster in the world, growing up gobbling puffed-up Toutons, or maybe just imbibing the intoxicating Iceberg beer that made them that way. Karen’s talk was peppered with fascinating foodie facts and flavoured with the specialities of the area.
With the region heavily populated by people who ‘jumped the pond’, many of its dishes have their roots in the West coast of England, Ireland and France and its population clearly retains a desire to stay close to the food and heritage of its ancestors. Newfoundland is the nearest part of North America to the UK, its people fought in both world wars, and, until 1949, it was a British colony. Many recipes have a homely familiarity to them and their origins lie in foods we all know and love well. The Women’s Institute was founded in Ontario in 1897, and home cooking basics permeate everyday life. Food education clearly starts at home, and the tradition of learning from aunts, mothers and grandmothers remains strong. Karen taught us how to cook (and made plenty of supplies for us to taste) three simple every-day recipes that resonate with all generations of the province.
Every family in Newfoundland has a secret recipe for tea buns, and we were hugely grateful to Karen for the bartering and blackmail she undertook in order to bring us this delicious recipe! Tea buns are similar to rock cakes or scones, and are sometimes called ‘raisin buns’. They are served at breakfast or at teatime with butter, jam and the much-loved ‘Fussel’s Cream’. This tinned cream, is a precious import in a country with very little dairy farming, and when it runs out people ‘will sell their grannies to get hold of it!’ The raisins in this recipe were soaked in rum, a luxury that has always been in plentiful supply in this most north-western province; ships were sent from Newfoundland to the Caribbean packed with supplies of salt cod, and the empty ships always returned filled with rum and brown sugars.
Cloudberry jam, made from the berries frequently associated with Scandinavian countries on a similar latitude, often crowns the tea buns. The culture of preserving is strong in Newfoundland, and one can hardly blame the locals – I too would be even more passionate about jamming than I already am if I could embellish my jar labels with such appealing names as cloudberry, dogberry, bilberry, marshberry, pheasant berry and black huckleberry jam!
Making homemade bread is common place in the kitchens of Newfoundland, and it is from this that the delightful Toutons originate. Mothers would tear pieces off the proving crock dough and fry it in scruncheons (rendered pork fat) to feed hungry children for breakfast or after school. The dough puffs up rather like doughnuts, and the hot Toutons are then served with butter and molasses or maple syrup. Sometimes they are made with soda bread dough, revealing the Irish heritage in many homes.
All fish in Newfoundland is called by its name, except cod, which is simply called ‘fish’. A staple food of Newfoundland is the Newfoundland fish cake. Salt cod is left to desalinate overnight, and we were reminded by Karen that the water must be changed twice before the cod is ready to use. This simple recipe contains the simplest of ingredients, but the flavour is enhanced by the addition of a unique seasoning – dried savoury. With a harsh northern climate, herbs are treasured and dried. There are two types of dried savoury, winter and summer, with the winter variety adding an even more pronounced flavour to dishes. The savoury was fried with onions to further intensify its flavour; then, in the traditional Newfoundland way, the ingredients were mixed together, speedily shaped and dusted with flour. Finally, the fish cakes were fried in scruncheons while the mixture was still warm. We were lucky enough to sample these straight from the pan – with lashings of ‘Mudda’s pickle’ or piccalilli!
Newfoundland fish cakesFish cakes are not the only seafood enjoyed for breakfast. Fish and Brewis (hard tack bread and salt cod) is also served regularly. But we drooled with envy when Karen told us of breakfasts when she had feasted upon Lobster Benedict. Now a highly prized export, lobster used to be a poor man’s food; indeed Bernadette from the Canadian Tourist Board told us that her grandmother used to hide her family’s lobster shells in the bin as she was so ashamed to reveal any evidence that they were so poor they couldn’t afford meat. Another sought-after treasure from the cold waters of Newfoundland is the Digby scallop, a large, meaty scallop that the locals also claim is the best of its kind in the world. Karen also described how seals are hunted for food, not for sport. She tasted seal charcuterie and was told stories about Flipper Pie (made from seal flippers).
It is not only the tea buns, Toutons, fish cakes and wonderfully named berries that captured my imagination. As I headed out into the dark and rather less friendly streets of London to catch my train home, Karen clearly felt my tastebuds and curiosity needed further tickling – she kindly gave me some photocopies of recipe book indexes and a few pages from well-thumbed local cookbooks. With such intriguing, comforting and friendly recipes beckoning my attention – from Bakeapple Pie, Martha Washington Pie, Old-fashioned Fig Duff and Blueberry Buckle to Newfoundland Marshberrry Cake and Grandmother’s Apple Crow’s Nest – I think my Newfoundland food adventure might only just have begun.
news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/newfoundland – Interesting article about the shortages of Fussel’s Cream.
© Miranda Gore Browne 2015
Photographs © Silvija Davidson 2015
If you would like to see what went on at the workshop Guild member John Whiting made a video recording of the Taste of Newfoundland workshop, which you can view
here. John has also put the three recipes from the workshop on his website at
www.whitings-writings.com/Newfoundland%20Recipes.pdf.
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