It was Burns Night a week or two ago so I decided some more puddings needed highlighting too before we lost them. So I organised a pudding night for 20 folks. Do you remember those puddings your grandmother used to cook? They gave you a warm feeling emotionally as well as warming the belly. So here is what we had.
Savoury Puddings
Vegetarian Haggis - well you cannot ignore the chieftain of the pudding race. I bought it in as a long sausage and boiled it for an hour with the Derby Savoury. I think I prefer vegetarian haggis.
Derby Savoury Pudding. This looks like it was the precursor to sage and onion stuffing and the original recipe said bake it in the oven. I took a guess that it would have originally been boiled as many puddings were and made it into a big sausage with cling film then boiled it for 3 hours. A surprisingly good pudding that would slice and fry well with a breakfast. I'm going to try it with fruit in it to make a fruit pudding and maybe also create a spicy version.
That it bulged at one end caused much hilarity but it showed me how much it expands.
The texture inside was quite dense but ate well.
Yellow Pease Pudding and Green Pease Pudding. I tried this with two types of dried peas to see the difference. The yellow had mild spicing and the green a herby flavour and there were onions in both. Both surprised people as most had never had Pease Pudding. Yet this was once a staple of the nation. Originally boiled in a bag or clootie often with the meat if you had any they came to be associated with ham as the flovour would have carried across in the water. I think both were great.
One more old pudding that I found online was Mrs Banyard's Bacon Pudding. This was a clootie pudding boiled in a cloth and this was only the second time I've made a clootie. Last time I used a tea towel but I decided I needed a proper cloth as I often want to strain yogurt and need a decent cloth. After much research as to what it consists of I settled for a babies muslin. I got a new one just to be polite. This proved to be perfect and has since strained yogurt beautifully.
Mrs Banyard's Bacon pudding is a suet pastry wrapped savoury. I love suet pastry and suet dumplings so this looked like a winner for me. The filling in the recipe was bacon, apple and onion. I had some Hogs Pudding in the fridge so diced that and added it too. Then I rolled out the suet pastry, sticky, floured the cloth when hot and wet got to work. It was harder to form that I expected but I fought it together and tied it up. Then into the largest pot of boiling water we had. I came out an hour and a half later and stayed in one piece though I lost some of the skin to the clootie.
Inside the suet had run to fill all the holes so it was like a cake texture. But the flavours had spread right through so it all tasted good to me.
One more savoury pudding to go and this was one of my own invention. I called it a Savoury Battenberg.
Inside the flakey pastry it is a pudding feast. Two quarters of black pudding and two quarters of white. It tasted yummy. Went really well once cold with pickles but very rich tasting.
So now onto the sweet puddings, where british cookery excelled for many years when I was a boy. Grandmothers delights.
Sweet Puddings
Over Christmas I made over 250 mince pies. Using the same pastry and package Jo made some individual apple pies. We put cinnamon and sultanas in with the apples as well as some sugar. The tasted pretty good and made a great bite sized nibble.
Not a good photo I'm afraid as it is cropped from the whole table.
Suet Treacle Pudding - oh my childhood revisited. Made in a bombe mould to make it round it is just sheer delight. I use golden syrup rather than treacle as I prefer the taste. It was steamed for 3 hours.
Rice Pudding. Again cooked for 3 hours. They always come out different says Mary Berry and how I agree with her. This one dried out a bit more than I'd have liked but it still tasted good and creamy.
Here it is nestling between the apple pies, Sue's trifle and Tina's pancakes. A few more of the puddings on offer.
I also used the last of my sisters plums from the freezer to make a plum pie.
Jo made some fudge creams
and I made some Coconut Rice Custards. Both of these were pre-made and kept in the fridge.
Here is Sue's trifle again
And Jenny's Cheesecake. All of this was eaten being the only pudding to be totally demolished.
Andrea bought a very boozy berry dish
Toby made a great Pecan Pie
And there were more dishes arrived. A Fruit salad from Johanne,
an Apple Cake from Shona,
a Chocolate "oh my gosh that's so chocolate" from Bridget
With some homemade ice cream, homemade yogurt, custard and cream the table was groaning.
And afterwards people wanted to sing? All I wanted to do was lie down.
