FLY-AWAY CHRISTMAS PUDDING

This was a family recipe which I thought might have been lost. Again, I found it among some old files of my mother dating back to 2007. If I remember correctly, it came from my grandmother on my father's side and used to be a lighter (hence fly-away, I think) version of what would otherwise be an overly-heavy thing to come after the roast meal. I have not altered a word. Oddly enough, immediately after the recipe is an e-mail exchange about a proposed trip to Sudan. How the two got mixed I will never know.

FLY-AWAY CHRISTMAS PUDDING  (6-8 people)

 

8 oz                         Large seedless raisins

8 oz                         Sultanas

2 oz                         Whole pieces of candied peel

3 oz                         Ground almonds

3 oz                         Fine wholemeal bread, made into breadcrumbs

(without the crusts)

4 oz                         Demerara sugar

3 oz                         Softened unsalted butter

1                              Small lemon squeezed + the gratings of the skin

2                              Eggs

3 tablespoons         Brandy

1 tablespoon           Milk

½ teaspoon             Freshly grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon             Cinnamon

½ teaspoon             Mixed spices

 

 

 

Method:

 

Pour boiling water over the candied peel and let it soak for three or four minutes.  Drain and cut into slivers.

 

Mix together the large raisins (separating them if necessary) with the sultanas, candied peel, ground almonds, breadcrumbs, Demerara sugar and salt.

 

Stir or rub the butter well into the dry ingredients with the fingertips.  Add grated lemon and juice.

 

Beat the eggs together with the milk and brandy; add to bowl and mix.

 

Add spices.

 

Put mixture into a buttered 1¾ pint basin, cover with buttered disc of greaseproof paper and kitchen foil.  Tie with string to lift out.

 

Steam for four hours; then for further one hour on the day.

Glacé Fruits

One of my mother's recipes, from 2007, found among some old files. Not a word has been changed. I wonder whether in fact it is copied from somewhere - an American book or article? The corn syrup, use of the word "vacation" and "1/2 cup" are all clues ... Perhaps I will never know.

Ingredients:

1 pound of fruit
4-1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of corn syrup

Instructions:

Prepare the fruit: Pit cherries and prick them with a pin to allow the syrup to penetrate the skin; peel core and quarter or slice apples, apricots, plums, pears, peaches; peel and core pineapple and cut it into rings or cubes; slice citrus fruits thinly (no need to peel them). Because this is such a time-consuming process, you will want to select the best fruits and treat them with care.

Place the fruit in the bottom of a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer gently until almost tender. Cook the fruit in batches, if necessary. Lift the fruit out with a slotted spoon and place in a shallow dish. Pour out all but 1 cup of the cooking water (or add enough to make a cup), add 1/2 cup of sugar and the corn syrup. Heat it to dissolve the sugar, bring to a boil, and pour over the fruit to cover. Leave it overnight.

Next day, pour the syrup into a pan, add a half-cup of sugar, heat to dissolve, bring to a boil, pour over the fruit and leave overnight. Repeat again for the next five days. On the eighth day, pour the syrup into a pan, add the half-cup of sugar, and boil, then reduce the heat, add the fruit and cook gently for three minutes. Pour the fruit and syrup into the dish and leave it to soak for two days. Repeat once more. At this point, the syrup should look like runny honey. Leave the fruit to soak for 10 days to three weeks and take a vacation!

At the end of the soaking period, remove the fruit from the syrup and arrange it on a wire rack over a tray. Dry in a warm place or in the oven at the lowest setting, until the surface no longer feels sticky. If you haven’t done enough work by this point, you can also plunge each piece of fruit into boiling water and roll it in granulated sugar to coat the surface. Store in an airtight canister, tin or jar, in a cool, dark place

 

Bridle the Wind

Joan Aiken has a wonderful way of writing about journeys and, sometimes, the food you can pick up along the way.

Here she is in “Bridle the Wind”. Her hero Felix, probably on horseback, stops en route to somewhere. This feels like Spain.

“I was able to buy from her a couple of long red sausages (festoons of them were hanging from the rafters to dry), a cold omelette, and a long loaf of bread. I also persuaded her to sell me a chahokoha, or goat-skin wine bottle.”

Mustard

 I once put up a very similar post to this one, but my views below are, I think, worth echoing. I will no doubt discover a number of people who disagree with this. I consider Coleman’s English mustard kills flavour. The powdered version is useful for dusting beef, for making fresh horseradish sauce or as an ingredient in many other dishes (eg barbecue sauce). I occasionally like the very process of making it using the powder and adding water and leaving to rest. But my mustard of choice is Dijon: sufficient piquancy but not robbing the underlying dish of flavour. A slightly milder but still pleasing mustard is coarse grain. I would prefer either to English (too hot), American (too sweet), or German (too oddly flavoured). And I have never understood why in England if you ask for French mustard a revoltingly sweet brown concoction is produced that has been nowhere near France; it is almost as though it is an attempt to put people off French mustard in favour of English. Indeed I would prefer English to THAT particular variety despite my prejudices away from English. For completeness, I also reject whisky, truffle or any other weirdly flavoured mustard. Again, mustard is so strongly flavoured that I don’t see the point. Other than tarragon mustard which is rather good. Enough from me.

Rhubarb soufflé

This is my own version, based on lots of different recipes I found online. From sources as diverse as “The Times of India” and The Express. Not a single one of the recipes I found was quite right - and any containing cornflour I am afraid I rejected at once.

INGREEDIENCE

300g rhubarb

25g sugar (to mix with raw rhubarb)

Glug of elderflower syrup

3 tablespoons golden caster sugar (to mix with egg whites)

4 egg whites

2 egg yolks

METHOD

Chop the rhubarb into roughly 1.5 inch chunks. Mix with 25g sugar and glug of elderflower syrup. Bake for 25 mins in oven gas mark 9. Mash rhubarb. Allow to cool.

Beat egg whites. Fold in sugar and egg yolks. Finally add rhubarb. Stir together. Spoon into 6 ramekins. Will probably make 7 so one spare.

Bake ramekins for 8 mins on gas mark 9.

Eat.

Two go adventuring again

 I have just had an experience taken straight out of a Famous Five book. You know, the kind where Julian (my namesake) turns up at a farmhouse wanting to buy some milk and gets presented not only with the fresh milk but newly-laid eggs and half a cake. And "I wouldn't dream of charging you, young master. Right nice they are, I'll be bound."

And the episode happened in Buckinghamshire, where Enid Blyton lived for most of her life, and wrote many of her books. I had passed the place many times in a cab on the way to the local station but there had never been an opportunity to go inside, until now. A temporary traffic light, a queue of traffic behind, light drizzle, and the right hand turn leading to (if I had remembered correctly) the farm shop I had spotted previously. And there it was. No lights visible, nowhere obvious to park, and my wife was convinced, at just after 5.00 pm, that the place was closed, so stayed in the car. I was a little more hopeful, having seen the sign outside which they would surely have brought in at closing time. "Follow the garden path to the farm shop" said the sign. So I started walking across the farmhouse garden, thinking that the slightly trodden grass amounted to the path. Then I heard a voice. I was in trouble, I thought. But no. The bearded farmer, wreathed in smiles ("Closed? No we only close after the last customer has left") beckoned me in. I hastened back to the car to fetch my wife and we went in. "It's not much", said our host, "I don't want you to get too excited." But excited we were: a loaf of fresh gingerbread we snaffled at once. Then a jar of homemade honey. "Do you need any eggs?" My wife replied, "I think we've got eggs". "You'll never taste an egg like these ones. Take two as a present." Needing no further invitation, but rejecting the idea of a free gift, I started filling a box with half a dozen. And there was home-cured bacon as well. When we settled up, we were told: "I'm not charging you all that for the honey", and he knocked fifty pence off. Through a doorway, we saw his wife, surrounded by even more eggs on the kitchen table. Away we went, already planning to return.

More about Bombay Toast

 Bombay Toast (or should I now call it Mumbai Toast?) is a favourite breakfast comestible in this household. It was first introduced to me by two friends in Madras (now Chennai) over thirty years ago. My wife insists that it is in fact French Toast. But this morning, I rather foolishly cooked it in a pan in which I had a night or so before cooked what I describe as Aloo Chaat (and which my wife insists, correctly, is nothing of the kind, but which might safely be described as currified potato and things) and which had clearly not be washed as thoroughly as it might have been. When presented with her two slices of “Bombay Toast”, my younger stepdaughter ate one of the slices and told me that it looked slightly as though it had been cooked in highlighter (Turmeric I fear) and tasted a “bit weird”. I asked her not to inform her sister of the issue (on the basis that that helping might never be sampled if she did) and she graciously obliged. The elder stepdaughter ate all of hers with no complaint. And my wife ate the remainder of the younger’s, in the full knowledge of the Bombayness (on this occasion) of the toast. For my part, when everyone had popped out for the day, I decided to use a clean pan for mine.