Plum pudding should really be called Pudding Made From Rubbish You Had Lying Around Anyway, because traditionally it's just dried-up stuff, crumbs, animal parts, and booze.
A year's end, let's-clean-the-kitchen-by-making-a-pudding pudding.
I made my first flaming plum pudding last year using this recipe by Cait Johnson, but I substituted apricots and lemon-flavored prunes for the citron and currants, walnuts for almonds, and Baileys and rum instead of Guinness.
I had never steamed a pudding, so I improvised by setting my pudding mold (a mixing bowl) in the bottom of a large soup pot on top of some apple corers. It worked! I was so excited when my pudding congealed, I felt like Victor Frankenstein!
The finished product was the medium-sandy color of construction site mud, but tasted terrific. I was pleasantly surprised. Not that it mattered, because the chief purpose in making this pudding was to find a safe and appropriate outlet for my seasonal pyromania.
Word to the wise: I had to pour a LOT of brandy on the pudding to get a good flame going when I lit it. The alcohol flame was a beautiful holy ghostly Pentecost blue flame that made everyone present feel quite magical and Hogwartsy.
Before I found Cait's I looked at a lot of other plum pudding recipes on line. One was a traditional English one with the menacing advice "It should not be suffered to stop boiling," which sounds like something you would overhear at an Inquisition. My favorite recipe was the unintentionally hilarious "Professor Plum's no-suet plum pudding," which contained this catchall explanation/disclaimer:
This does not have the suet but note that it has a lot of butter. Also, I do not have the recipe for Zabaglione Sauce but I am pretty sure the main ingredient is egg yolks. Because of the omission of all the citron and candied fruits, I don't think it will really have the traditional flavor, but it might actually go over better with kids who don't like those 'yucky green things' (candied citron). The use of bourbon is certainly not English but might appeal to Southerners. I have not tried this one at all.
1 comment:
We have a traditional pudding we eat for Christmas. Well, my dad and my siblings do. My mom thinks it's kind of yuck, seeing as how it's steamed vegetables with lard and sugar, plus a little raisins and spice. Shocking to think that this used to be something you had to save up to make.
That recipe makes me laugh.
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