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.

First night in Pisa

Sometimes, I am told, a memory of a fine meal is situational, rather than related to the quality of the food. I am not entirely convinced. But my first ever meal in Pisa, which was my first ever evening meal in Italy, has stayed with me for many years. Since 2008 in fact.

I was by myself but, like Dr Watson in one of my favourite Holmes stories, had no time to be lonely. The holiday which lay ahead was a walking holiday in Tuscany. But I was not due to arrive in the marvellously named “Castelnuevo di Garfagnana” - Newcastle of the Enchanted Forest - for a couple of days and had decided to spend some nights in Pisa. Having arrived in the afternoon, I had already seen the Leaning Tower and wandered around the empty streets surrounding it: pleasingly, a few moments outside the tourist trap surrounding the Tower, was medieval calm.

I can recall nothing about where I stayed that night but imagine that I chose somewhere to eat that was nearby. I sat outside, took photographs of my food and scribbled in my notebook. I have written before about my first meal in Italy which was on 11 September 2001. On that occasion, Cousin Pen had said she wasn’t hungry enough for more than one course so I, out of politeness, had followed suit. This evening, with no one to please but myself, I opted for all the courses.

I remember little about the antipasti or the secondi, but they were better than merely adequate. The pasta, though, put everything in the shade. Taglioni, which I had never had before, with fresh truffle. I can still taste it.

I recall one incident well. A girl aged about ten, I supposed, coming towards the restaurant and seeing her friend, rushing towards her, throwing herself at her in delight with the customary “ciao ciao”. The friend was equally pleased to see her. The encounter had all the warmth of the Mediterranean.

I finished my meal with a vin santo accompanied by little almond biscuits to dip into the glass.

One should never try to recreate meals and fortunately I did not have the opportunity. On the walking part of the holiday, I raved about the meal I had enjoyed and when we all arrived at Pisa to return to the airport at the end of our holiday with a few hours to spare, I suggested having lunch at the same restaurant: I had in mind more taglioni with truffle. My fellow walkers were themselves keen or decided to humour me. But when we arrived at the restaurant, it was closed.

A collection of fictional meals

Name the author... A refreshing ginger beer, ginger ale, lemonade, orangeade, honey lemonade, icy cold creamy farm milk, natural clear cold spring water or pineapple juice diluted with ice-cold water out of Naomi Barlow's old well. Or maybe, if you're feeling chilly, a mug of steaming cocoa, strong and milky coffee or tea made with blackcurrant jam. Breakfast from "The Three Shepherds" consisting of a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of their own cured bacon and their own eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast, with little mushrooms on the same dish, and toast, butter, marmalade (that Kiki's been pecking the rinds out of), butter and their own honey, to come. Perhaps a light lunch from the dairy (Fatty’s treat), served by a plump woman in a vast white apron to serve you and beam at you. Two boiled eggs apiece and some plates of bread and butter (with strawberry jam – they’re her own growing, the strawberries), and some of her own bottled gooseberries if you like, with a jug of cream. And she’d made some new buns, would you like some? Or perhaps a picnic lunch instead. Freshly-baked bread, mustard and cress sandwiches, tins of tongue, tins of sardines, pork pie, pickled onions (Dick's favourite) an enormous hard-boiled egg salad, rain-swollen lettuces, crisp, juicy and sweet, cucumber dipped in vinegar, nuts arranged in handwoven baskets (gathered by Jack). And some ripe plums from the tree: you can spit out the stones down at the beach. Afternoon tea with Clarissa’s old nurse. Tongue sandwiches with lettuce, hard-boiled eggs to eat with bread-and-butter, great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs. Lucy’s brother’s greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowding the top, biscuits of all kinds and six jam sandwiches! Followed by a farm-house high-tea: a fresh ham, glistening pink. A veal-and-ham pie smothered in green parsley, like the ham. Yellow butter in glass dishes. A blue jug of thick yellow cream. (NOT to go with the ham, Gussy!) Honey. Home-made strawberry jam. Hot buttery and jammy scones. A large fruit-cake as black as a plum pudding inside. Egg sandwiches. Tea, cocoa and creamy milk. Supper of kippers cooked over an open fire, potatoes cooked in their jackets with butter, and sausages burnt and a little burst on one side, with fried tomatoes. And a midnight feast to finish off with: eclairs, Silky's Pop biscuits, macaroons, currant buns, meringues, blackberry tart, a jam sponge, Joanna's chocolate cake, big slabs of cherry cake (left by Aggie under the bushes), thick, sticky pieces of gingerbread, sugar biscuits, chocolate ices, chocolate biscuits, juicy ripe strawberries and cream, greengages fresh from Old Thatch and Green Hedges, tinned peaches, tinned pineapple, tins of Nestlé's Milk, large melting ice creams and toffee shocks presented by Moonface. And some bullseyes--the hottest you can find! Not to mention the Tippy-top pudding, Poppity cake and Google buns cooked by the elf on Angela's little toy stove. And an ice cream pudding which had dainty biscuits of all kinds set around it. Cooking good, very good cooking!

Grandfather’s Curry Puffs

My grandfather was mainly conservative in his tastes: grey beef, thinly sliced, cooked within an inch of its life. He was fond of smoked salmon and sugared almonds - although polite hints were dropped when the sweets became the present he would always receive from his grandchildren. He would sometimes take charge of the cooking: barbecue chicken was a favourite of his. And he introduced me to Bolst's mango pickle.

So it was that my mother was particularly fond of introducing her father-in-law, my grandfather, to foods she thought he might enjoy. She knew he had been born in Bangalore, and she once produced some Tamarind for him. Curry puffs he also liked. For his funeral, she commissioned me to buy a hundred vegetable samosas from my local takeaway which were provided most beautifully wrapped. But the beef, on this occasion, was served rare.

Italian food quiz

 One Italian state. Three cities in that state. Five internationally famous foods or dishes. Name them …

Of salt and table manners

"Images flashed across his mind – a table laid for dinner and a chubby toddler sitting across from him in a wooden high-chair burying his fists into a bowl of strawberries and cream while the grown-ups laughed."

Some words from an unpublished story written by my mother, who was never excited about table manners. She approved of reading while eating, and even licking the remains of some delicious sauce from the plate.

Her parents in law, my grandparents, were the ones I recall teaching me table manners. Elbows not on the table. My grandfather told me that when he had been younger, those responsible for him had threatened to bash his elbows on the table, and, if he continued to offend, made good the threat.

Granny told us of her school in Eastbourne, Moira House ("Mo Ho"), which closed in 2020, where, if they wanted the salt, were taught to say: "Pass the cruet".

My father didn't encourage this particular piece of ridiculousness but did not like it when his sons said curtly "Salt please" instead. His biggest bugbear, though, was people eating with their mouths full. I recall in that rather bleak post-Christmas period - this would have been in 1983, so almost forty years ago - my mother cooked some brussels sprouts which she had forgotten to take to her parents-in-law for Christmas lunch. I was not fond of brussels sprouts at the best of times, and was sent away from the table for the sin of eating with my mouth full: now had we been eating steak ...

Then there were table manners at school. The PE teacher once sent me sent away from the table in a café in Bourton-on-the-Water of all places. My crime - unconsciously performed - had been tipping vinegar into my hand and consuming it.

One of the teachers took a group of pupils to his house and we ended up in the kitchen where I found the spice cupboard. I was fascinated by the meat tenderiser and longed to try it. My mother warned me off the stuff on another occasion: "It melts meat. Your tongue is made of meat."

On another occasion, the Geography teacher forced me to eat a slice of cake after I had pulled off a bit of the icing. A curious punishment indeed. But I felt duly humiliated. I hadn't even supposed to have had tea at school that day, having been taken out by my father.

Finally, I recall the occasion when I spilt salt at school - a whole pot of it on to the table. "Very silly" said the Headmaster with displeasure. After I had cleared it up using a dustpan and brush, I was told: "You've ruined that brush."

A Summer Feast

“Picture a grassy glade with moss o’erlaid, a snowy cloth spread on satin sward and covered with such dainties as these-strawberry and pineapple cream ice-cool, fragrant, delicious-flanked by a wall of delicately crisped sponge cakes! Towering near stands a huge cake, brown, substantial, rich in fruit. A really sustaining cake, in contrast to a dish of pink and white meringues, a variety of glistening jellies, trembling creams, glowing salads composed of every variety of fruits. Yonder a chicken is resting in its dress of mayonnaise. Companioned by jellied fat ducks, which rear side by side like a pair of old friars, stuffed full with seasoning.” May Wynne, Peggy’s First Term.

Strammer Max

In his account of a walk through the mountains of Europe, “Clear Waters Rising, Nicholas Crane describes this Updikian “snack”: “three fried eggs on a layer of bacon and a wedge of bread, covered with chopped raw onions, sliced cucumber, tomato and gherkins”.

Granny's curry

 There will be those who scoff at the “recipe” below, on the grounds that it is inauthentic. Nothing like what I would eat in an Indian restaurant here, it is true, but I am bound to say that I have eaten something very similar in India itself. My grandfather was born in Bangalore (as it was then called) where “Bolst’s” was founded: that company was responsible for its mild curry powder and its mild mango pickle. The curry powder is still easy to find; the pickle less so.

This is, of course, a meal memorable for having been part of my childhood. My mother, no mean cook herself, used to enjoy “Granny’s watery curries”. According to Granny, it was my mother who first taught her about the use of onions in cooking. Granny was not an adventurous cook, but I cannot recall ever not enjoying a meal prepared by her. And she introduced me to many culinary techniques. Although teased about her repeated insistence on adding “just a little sprinkle” of sugar to meals, it was she who persuaded me that a squeeze of lemon juice on countless savoury dishes would improve them.

Here, then, is her recipe, possibly never written down, for beef curry.

Three tablespoons Bolst’s curry powder

1 large onion.

1 clove garlic.

500g stewing beef or beef mince.

3 fresh tomatoes.

3 large carrots.

: large potatoes.

1 tin chopped tomatoes.

Salt and pepper.

Olive oil to fry.

Fry the meat. Set aside.

Fry the curry powder, dry, watching it so it doesn’t burn.

Add the garlic and onion, fairly finely-chopped. Stir in the curry powder and add a little oil. Stir. Allow to swear.

Add the carrots, chopped into rounds, the potatoes, cubed, and the fresh tomatoes, quartered. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add about half a pint of water and the tin of chopped tomatoes. Allow to simmer.

Serve with rice, poppadums and natural yoghurt.

Alici in Tortellini

My mother used to have a large platter with a recipe for “Alici in Tortellini” on it and I used to think it was the Italian for “Alice in Wonderland.”

But I digress.

In “Alice in Wonderland”, one of the many receptacles labelled “Drink me” contains something which, we are told, had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast”.

I have been reflecting on whether said drink would have been a thing of great delight or of revoltingness unspeakable. Whichever, it strikes me that the description is reminiscent of some of the more extravagant accounts of fine wines. Perhaps in this case a Royal Tokaji. Now THAT deserves the words “Drink me” on every bottle.

James’s egg mayonnaise

My uncle James used to make this every Boxing Day and bring it from Orpington, where he lived (and lives) with his family to East Dulwich, where we lived. He would bring it in a patterned brown rectangular pottery dish with a lid. The eggs with their mayonnaise coating, stained with paprika on top. Unctuous and delicious.The recipe came from Delia Smith. Unlike me, James would make the mayonnaise in a blender. One year my grandmother told us darkly on arrival that there had been problems with the mayonnaise that morning. It had curdled - possibly more than once. But when James arrived, he came with the usual brown dish and the eggs mayonnaise were as good as ever. The last time I recall his making it was when I was unwell in hospital and he brought a dish of it for me to sample. It did the trick.

I have not found Delia’s recipe, as such, but she describes what is required. “But oh, the real thing! Eggs boiled not quite hard but still a little creamy, and a proper home-made mayonnaise flavoured with garlic and looking like thick glossy ointment - there’s a rare luxury indeed. Serve the halved eggs, 1 or 1 1/2 per person, on a bed of sliced pickled dill cucumber and garnish with thin strips of anchovy and small black olives.” I am not convinced by the bed, with its additions, and James did not bother with them. Here, though, is the mayonnaise recipe.

INGREDIENTS

2 large egg yolks

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 heaped teaspoon dry mustard powder

1 level teaspoon salt

Freshly milled black pepper

10 fl oz groundnut oil  (275 ml)

White wine vinegar

METHOD

Mix the egg yolks, garlic, mustard powder, salt and pepper. Add the oil, to begin with, drop by drop, either in a mixer or do it by hand (my preference). Add the vinegar towards the end, and you can, as the mixture thickens, add the oil in a steady stream. Keep it looking yellow, my mother would always say.

Crustacea

I have never quite understood the difference between a shrimp and a prawn. "I'm not a shrimp” a character called Jimmy Brown said indignantly in one of Enid Blyton’s Circus books. "Well maybe you're a prawn then.", replied the circus man, quick as a flash, demonstrating, in Blyton’s world, the ready wit of circus folk. Blyton knew the difference, but I still don’t. And what are Dublin Bay prawns? And scampi? And what is the singular of scampi? Apparently, it’s scampo. I used to eat scampi out of a basket in pubs in the late 1970s. Here, though, are two plates of deliciousness from about thirty years after that. An oasis in East London. Red wine, not white.

Midnight Feast

My mother was at boarding school and had a most unpleasant-sounding headteacher who everyone called "Hetty". The girls in her dorm organised a midnight feast one night and Hetty got wind of it. At midnight, when the girls were about to creep down for their feast, in walked Hetty. She turned on the lights and commanded the girls to get dressed and walk downstairs. In the dining room, she had laid the table and put out all the food that had been gathered for the midnight feast. The girls had to eat it all in dead silence, with beady-eyed Hetty sitting at the end of the table, having sucked all the joy out of the escapade. At one point my mother picked up a slice of what she thought was cheese and ate it only to discover it was a piece of margarine. She did not even dare to giggle. At the end of the "feast", they had to clear the plates and then go upstairs and put on their night things before the light was switched off. Not another word was said about it.

Cold curried apple soup

Just the name of this appears in my mother's recipe book, as though she had eaten it and wanted, at some stage, to write down the recipe. But she never did.