Sussex pond pudding

Last weekend I made a Sussex pond pudding and, as I occasionally do, I posted a picture of it on Facebook. The ensuing discussion included both a request for my recipe and a link to a recent Guardian article "the perfect... Sussex pond pudding".

Here's my recipe, fleshed out with a few pictures. I've taken it from a slim booklet of traditional Sussex recipes I bought a few years ago in a branch of "Sussex Stationers", a now defunct budget bookshop chain.

1/ Make suet pastry from 8 oz self raising flour, 4 oz suet, 2 oz breadcrumbs, pinch of salt, and enough water to make a soft dough. I use a food processor as I don't have the knack of making pastry by hand. The Guardian's recipe omits breadcrumbs, so won't have the brown flecks (from the crust) you can see in my picture.



2/ Roll out the pastry and line a buttered 2 pint pudding bowl. To make a better fit to the steep sided bowl I cut out three triangles so the remainder is like a radiation warning symbol shape. I then join these cut edges (after dampening with water) inside the bowl. Trim around the top edge then combine all the pastry offcuts and roll out to make a circular lid.



3/ Wash an unwaxed lemon and cut up 4 oz of butter and allow to soften. Stab the lemon many times with a skewer, then wrap in the butter, then roll in 4 oz of dark brown sugar. Place in the lined bowl with any left over sugar. The Guardian's version slashes the lemon with a knife and simply surrounds it with cubed butter and sugar which looks a lot easier.



4/ Attach the lid and trim the edges, then cover with a circle of parchment and an aluminium foil lid with room for expansion. It domes right up as it cooks.



5/ Steam for 3 to 4 hours (or a bit more), turn out on to a plate and eat.

Lemon sorbet

Some time ago a friend quoted the old saying about when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I replied that I make sorbet. She said that wouldn't do for her as she's allergic to eggs. I mentioned that I don't use egg in my sorbet and she asked for the recipe. Having typed it up I thought I might as well reproduce it here.

Citrus sorbet (eggless)



Ingredients

3 or 4 lemons or limes, preferably unwaxed
granulated sugar
water

This recipe is based on the one in Larousse Gastronomique, but adjusted as a result of much experimentation. The secret of making a sorbet without using egg whites is to add enough sugar to lower the freezing point significantly. Larousse specifies a target density of 1.1697 (spurious precision there) but uses such a large quantity of water that a lot of sugar has to be added later on.

1/ Weigh the fruit, in grammes.

2/ Make a syrup.
For every 100g of fruit, use 30g of sugar and 20ml of water. Put sugar and water in a small pan and bring to the boil, stirring continuously. The sugar probably won't dissolve until it's nearly boiling. Boil gently to make a clear syrup. Stand the pan in a bowl of cold water to cool.

3/ Finely grate the zest then squeeze the juice from the fruit. You should have about 40ml of juice for every 100g of fruit. If you've got a very different amount it might be worth making more or less syrup.

4/ Mix the zest, juice and cooled syrup.

[Dons white coat] Now, here comes the science bit.

5/ Weigh an empty measuring jug. Pour the mixture into the jug and weigh again. Divide the difference in weight by the volume of mixture to get its density. This should be in the region of 1.17, a bit over is better than a bit under. If the density is too high, stir in a little water and measure again. If it's too low, stir in a little sugar and measure again. You can guess how much sugar or water to add - 10ml of water adds 10ml to the volume and 10g to the weight, 10g of sugar adds 10g to the weight and very little to the volume.

6/ Pour the mixture into a suitable container and place in the deep freeze. Stir it every half hour or so, particularly as it begins to get slushy. You could fold in some beaten egg white at this point, but you don't need to.

7/ Remove from the freezer half an hour or so before serving.

8/ Serve as it is, or with a sprig of mint and a dash of vodka poured over it to make a 'colonel'.

The joy of oxtail

Last weekend I cooked an oxtail stew that's keeping me going through the week. I've had 5 servings from it so far, but now there's no meat left, just a damn good stock which should make a good soup tomorrow if I throw in plenty of pasta.

I used a Daube recipe from Hugh F-W's meat book. Hugh specifies shin or skirt of beef, but the nearest thing I could find in Waitrose was oxtail. As well as the ~1kg of this, there is 150g of pork belly, to add even more unctuousness. I'm not sure it's needed. Left to get cold, the stew solidifies into a firm jelly, with only a few mm of fat on top. I'm tempted to buy some more oxtail just to make stock - the result has to be better than the overly runny pseudo stock (ground bones and mince) you can buy. It might even be cheaper.