Tales from the Experimental Kitchen: Nearly-Perfect Christmas Pudding

[serinde]

I have been making traditional Xmas pud on-and-off for the last, yeesh, twelve years? or so; but I'd kept dorking around with different recipes, never doing the same thing twice, and last year it culminated in a dismal failure of greasy slime that collapsed under fire (literally). This year I applied SCIENCE!~; took two versions of earlier recipes that I had used with success, converted them to consistent measurements, decided which elements of each I wanted, and then fared forth.

Ideally, make this in the 6-cup pudding basin that lillilah got you like twenty years ago. In a pinch, you can use a good-sized bowl and cover it very very very tightly; look on the interwubs for instructions on this. Also ideally, start this a month before Xmas; I usually try and do it over Thanksgiving weekend; but honestly it will be fine even if you do it only a week early.

This should be made with suet. Find a local butcher if possible. Greenmarket meat vendors may be able to help; probably so can the meat counter at Whole Foods, Gourmet Garage, and mayyybe Fairway?

1. Take 2-1/3 c. mixed dried fruit (I used currants, raisins, and Jumbo Raisins™; you could throw in chopped figs, dates, prunes, craisins even).


2. Soak fruit in 1/2 cup of booze for a day or so. I used 1/4 c. each of Pedro Ximenez sherry and bourbon; you could do any brown spirit here, or just use brown spirits, or replace the PX with port or madeira; it is not critical. Stir it several times over the period.


3. Grate 4 oz. of beef suet, which is VERY roughly a cup and a half. This is tedious and annoying. It will go easier if you freeze the suet; and you had better have a really sturdy grater. It's also helpful to wear dish gloves, because your hands won't soften up the suet as quickly.


4. Make 1c of fresh bread crumbs. You can include the crust if it's soft.


5. Grate 1/2 c. of a good tart apple (peel it first).


6. Measure out 3/4 c. of flour, and stir in the zest of 1 lemon (you can do some orange zest if you want), a pinch of salt, and a bunch of your favorite warm spices. I like cinnamon, clove, ginger, and nutmeg at least; and may add cardamom and allspice if the mood takes me. Occasionally I get really wacky and put in long pepper.


7. Mix together the suet, bread crumbs, grated apple, the flour/spice/zest, and 3 eggs.


8. Once that is pretty well integrated, stir in the boozy fruit. All of the booze should have gotten taken up, but if any is left, stir that in too.


9. Scrape into your greased pudding tin and cover tightly.


10. Steam in a big pot (don't have the pudding tin touch the bottom of the pot! jar lids or, in our case, a glass British Civil Service paperweight help with this) for 3 to 4 hours. The water should stay about halfway up the side of your pudding tin.


11. Extract tin, let cool a bit.


12. Brush pudding with more bourbon (whiskey, rum, whatever), cover with a layer of wax paper, and put the tin's lid back on.


13. Store in a cool place until Xmas. If you have a pantry, cellar, or garage, that's perfect; the back of the fridge will suffice. If you feel like it, brush with booze a couple more times in the interval.


14. On Xmas, re-steam the pudding for another 3-4 hours. Un-mold it onto a plate when you're ready to serve.


15. Heat maybe 1/3 c. of spirit (bourbon, brandy, whiskey) gently in a saucepan. VERY CAREFULLY apply a match, and while it is flaming, pour over the pudding and bear it into the dining room to great acclaim.

I say "nearly perfect" because my dashing consort opined that the fruit:cake ratio could be swung a little more in the fruit direction, and I'm in agreement; so next year I'll ratchet that up to 2-1/2c. fruit and see how it does.

I serve this with hard sauce (butter, fine sugar {which I pounded myself in a mortar} {I'M NOT WEIRD YOU'RE WEIRD SHUT UP}, and brandy or bourbon whipped together) but I understand some people do a runny article that's milk or cream based.

Comments

[lillilah]

That is so awesome! Congratulations!!!!!!!!

[ilaine]

Now I am torn between trying your recipe next year or sticking with the traditional new york times version my mother and I made for decades. This year I sent Brian to Meyers of Keswick for a store bought pudding because I had absolutely zero time or energy to make one but desperately needed to set something on fire.