Bookmark us

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

pudding

Ireland: Bread and Butter Pudding with Irish Whiskey (March 9, 2008)

The Irish climate is the kind in which you need comfort food every now and then, and this dessert is one of the best sorts.

Bread and butter pudding has a long association with childhood and the nursery in these islands. A century or so ago, bread and milk was a common suppertime or bedtime dish for children. Eventually someone got the idea of making it a little more special by baking it: and probably someone else later came up with the concept that such a very simple dish might be made more interesting by adding dried fruit, or fruit preparations like jam or marmalade. After that, especially where Irish cooks were concerned, when they started thinking about tinkering with this old favorite from their past, it was probably only a matter of time before the whiskey arrived.

Just a note: probably it's not a good idea to make this with too lightly flavored a whiskey. EuroCuisineGuy (whose specialty is this kind of assessment) recommends Jameson's, Paddy's or Black Bush as whiskeys that would be able to stand up to the other ingredients and the baking process without being too aggressive. Lighter-flavored ones like Powers' or plain Bushmills are more likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

England: Yorkshire Pudding

The word pudding has been through a lot of changes since it first wandered into the English language, probably from the Old French, in the last millennium. Initially it was a noun that simply meant something's guts. ("Puddings" was the usual form.) Then it started to be used for the dishes that smart cooks used those guts for, once they'd been processed -- meaning sausages of various kinds. (Haggis would be one of the most robust of these: the black pudding of Irish, British and other European traditions would be another sort.) Then, around the 1600's or so, the word's use began to extend to any soft food that might be cooked like a pudding, whether there was a gut casing involved or not, or had flour or grain mixed in with it so that you could have made a pudding of it if you felt like it. Mealy puddings, batter puddings, floury puddings, marrow puddings, suet puddings and so forth began appearing all over the landscape: and by the 1700's fruit and numerous other sweet ingredients crept into the equation as well.

On the western side of the Atlantic, these gradually pushed the savory end of the pudding-flavor spectrum almost completely out of the picture, to the point where just about the only native North American usage of the word "pudding" is now either for a sweet powdered dessert preparation that gets mixed with milk, or something bought and eaten straight from the dairy case. But in Europe, and particularly in England and Ireland, the original usages of the word are still very much with us, confusing the tourists and delighting the locals as they have for generations.

The Yorkshire pudding is a member of the larger class of batter puddings. Originally these were usually boiled in a pudding cloth (the traditional English Christmas pudding is a distant relative). But later on, as home roasting of meats became more popular, batter puddings began to be baked underneath the vertical rotating spit or "jack" on which the beef was roasted. Later on, when the jack fell out of favor, Yorkshire puddings started to simply be baked in the same pan that caught the fat and juices (dripping) from the roast in the oven.

These days most people seem to prefer baking them separately, either in individual sizes (as in the picture above) or as a single big pud. Either way, Yorkshire puddings are a terrific accompaniment to any roast meat. Traditionally they were meant to fill up the dinner guests a bit before the meat course made its appearance on the table -- the idea being that there would be more meat to go around, and more left over for other uses later in the week, if everybody didn't just gorge themselves on the protein, but had the edge taken off first by a nice big plateful of carbs and yummy gravy.

There is a lot of unnecessary terror surrounding the Yorkshire pudding, mostly based on the fear that it won't rise properly. Yes, there are a few tricks to it, but they're not complicated. They boil down to the following: (1) Work with ingredients at room temperature. (2) Beat the batter well and let it rest before you bake it. The way the batter rises has to do with how much air you beat into it and also how well the gluten in the flour is developed (the gluten helps trap the air in the batter and keep it in place during the baking process). (3) Preheat the oven and make sure it's really hot to start with. (4) When you're almost ready to go: preheat the fat in the baking pan, whatever fat you're using. (Note: there are some odd recipes out there recommending that you use extra-virgin olive oil. This seems both contrary to the essential character of the dish -- which is northern -- and a mistake in terms of cooking physics: extra-virgin doesn't resist high heats well and would probably go acrid in the cooking process. Use plain vegetable oil if you don't want to go the beef-dripping route.)

Click on "read more" for the recipe and further directions.

Scotland: Haggis

As January 25th draws near and Burns Night starts to approach, a lot of people with Scots ancestry start thinking about haggis.

There are, of course, any number of people who will run screaming in the opposite direction at the very mention of the word, freaked out by vague images of unmentionable wobbly organ meats. Well, to each his or her own.

Haggis is simply an outsized country sausage, made -- as country sausages tended to be in previous centuries -- out of the parts of various animals which rich, snooty or fashionably squeamish people were too highfalutin' to be caught eating, no matter how good it tasted. Haggis includes the "pluck" of an animal -- its liver, heart and lungs: from this usage comes the adjective "plucky", meaning someone who has (surprise) guts. The phrase "liver and lights" (see also "I'll punch his lights out") is also associated with haggis, the lights being the lungs.

Haggis also usually involves something to bulk the meat content out -- usually suet and oats or oatmeal -- and is seasoned with onions, stock, salt and various spices. The meats having been cleaned, trimmed, and chopped, and mixed together with the oatmeal, some stock, and the various seasonings, the whole business is then packed into a casing. Traditionally this would have been a sheep's stomach: nowadays it's as likely to be an artificial casing of some kind. The haggis is then ready to be cooked. This means simmering it slowly for two or three hours in water or stock.

At a Burns Night ceremony, the haggis is served forth with great ceremony, often accompanied into the dining room by the skirl of pipes. It is courteously saluted with a recitation of Burns's great Address to a Haggis before being sliced up and served with the traditional accompaniments -- neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), and Scotch whiskey... often quite a lot of it, sometimes used as a distraction by those who like Robert Burns more than they like the haggis.

Seriously, it's not so terrible. Visitors to Scotland who visit a well-provided breakfast buffet at their hotel are likely to find sliced haggis there along with the bacon and fried mushrooms and other traditional Scots breakfast foods. It's particularly good fried (as so many things tend to become in Scotland, sometimes without warning, or indeed without any detectable reason. Whose idea was the deep-fried Mars Bar?). If anything, it's a little bland, and a dash of Tabasco does it no harm at all. Possibly this is why "designer" haggises, such as haggises based on smoked venison, are starting to turn up. There are also vegetarian haggises available.)

Click on "read more" for details on how to order a haggis for your Burns Night, and how to deal with it after you've got it.

Apple and Barley Pudding


          4    tbl  Pearl barley
      1 1/2     lb  Eating apples*
          2     oz  Sugar
        3/4    tbl  Double cream
          1     lt  Water


Method:
* Peeled, cored and sliced. 

Put the barley in the water and bring to the boil. Add the 
sliced apples and continue cooking gently until the barley 
and apples are soft. Press through a sieve, or put through 
the blender, and put back in the saucepan.

Add the sugar and lemon juice and bring to the boil again. 
Remove from the heat, allow to cool, and then chill. 

Serve cool with the cream stirred in.
12next ›last »
Syndicate content

Live European recipe advice