53 New Year's recipes": Christmas pudding

"53 New Year's Recipes": Christmas Pudding

18.11.2016, 19:09

Now we continue to get acquainted with New Year and Christmas dishes from different countries of the world. Let us remind you that every day until January 7 we will publish recipes and talk about fascinating customs and traditions accepted in one or another country.

Christmas pudding is on the agenda. It is not easy to make, tastes incredibly good, and it is impossible to imagine a Christmas table in England without it.

Christmas pudding is a common Christmas dessert in England, Ireland and the rest of the Commonwealth countries. Almost every British family has its own signature pudding recipe.

The British have several versions regarding the appearance of pudding. According to one, pudding was originally called thick oatmeal porridge cooked in meat broth with bread crumbs, nuts, honey and prunes. This was the pudding back in the 16th century.

According to another version, pudding appeared as a means of preserving meat, which was stored in a cold place along with prunes. When cooking the pudding, spices, cereals and prunes were added, and from the end of the 18th century sugar was added. Later, meat became unnecessary in this dish.

Already in the 19th century, pudding consisted of flour, fruit, fat and sugar with the addition of spices. The pudding became sweet and turned into a dessert. Pudding became a truly democratic dessert and an emblem of the English Empire. The imperial scope influenced the composition of the newest dish - it now contained 16 ingredients from a variety of British colonies. This particular pudding is currently considered traditional.

The pudding began to be prepared several weeks before the holiday, then it was “ripened” in a cold place and served on the first day of Christmas, but it is most appreciated when it is one year old, simply enduring two-year storage. Usually in the UK at Christmas it is customary to give specifically such puddings, observing all the required canons, therefore the set also includes fabric soaked in its juice and odors (a medical system of cells and intercellular substance, united by a common origin, structure and functions) .

Pudding is always valued as a precious gift, because it is always a hand-made piece. Any ingredient, any spicy note will reveal itself on the tongue. Christmas pudding is the most delicious dessert.

But we will not delve into the intricacies of ancient recipes and plunge into modernity.

Typically, peri-renal beef fat was used to make the pudding. But, since this is a rather difficult-to-find product, almost all culinary experts and books advise replacing it with solid margarine or frozen butter.

This is justified by the fact that ordinary butter melts even faster and, as a result, the pudding may turn out to be less porous.

Before serving on the ceremonial table, the pudding is heated, often soaked in brandy or other alcoholic drink and flambéed at the table; this, of course, is not necessary, but experts say that it tastes better this way. Christmas pudding comes with your choice of sweet sauce.

So let's begin! Let's take a simple and affordable recipe.

To make the dough we will need:

450 grams of dried fruit consistency. For example, prunes, two types of raisins, dried cranberries and cherries.

1 medium apple, peeled and grated

How to make Christmas pudding

Christmas pudding is not a bad thing, although its taste does not always captivate you from the very first spoon. It is quite filling and a bit heavy to end an already not very dietary feast. But for a separate tea party in the middle of the day it’s a good option.

Who doesn't understand about British Christmas pudding , or plum pudding ? I even know of some people who once a year begin a long, laborious boil of pudding and who are not residents of the English Isles. Me included.

Tradition calls for mixing the pudding on the Sunday closest to November 30th. It is called “ kneading ”. Some people do this earlier, even at the end of summer, since long aging only benefits the pudigu. And in the first ten days of December it is not too late to create the pudding - it will arrive by our Christmas.

A real English housewife will not waste her money on one small pudding. They are cooked several times at a time, so that they can be eaten and presented to numerous family and friends. We are content with one small one, for one pint, in other words 570 ml. After trying several recipes, I returned to where I started: Delia Smith's recipe . True, from the very beginning I replaced the internal fat, which is so suitable for the “correct” and “traditional” Christmas meal, with butter, and I also changed some other things in my own way. But still, the primary source is Delia.

I take 60 g of butter, cut into small cubes
30 g of flour, sifted
60 g of ground or grated stale bread crumbs (and if all the bread in the house is fresh - just dried in the oven)
120 g of dark muscovado sugar (I used to replace it with golden demerara, then for a greater smell it is necessary to slightly increase the amount of spices)
orange and lemon zest, grated - about a teaspoon each
nutmeg (certainly freshly grated)
ground cinnamon - a good pinch of
a mixture of gingerbread seasonings or, perhaps, ginger, cloves - to the best of your ability taste
270-280 g consistency of different types of raisins (in unique recipes, approximately half the consistency is black raisins, and a quarter each is light “sultan” and currant raisins, but instead of currants I take a large “jumbo” and chop it slightly, and add more a few finely chopped dates, mentioned in some of the recipes I read)
15 g candied orange and lemon peels, finely chopped
15 g almonds, blanched, peeled and finely chopped
half a medium-sized apple, peeled and finely chopped
1 egg
1 tbsp.
l whiskey or rum 70-80 ml British stout (and if it’s not there, I replace it with some local dark beer, porter)

In a deep bowl, carefully mix the butter with flour, add bread crumbs, spices, sugar, and after adding each component, knead the mixture. Add spices, dried fruits, almonds, zest, and apple evenly in the same manner. In a separate container, mix the egg with rum and beer. Pour the liquid onto the mixture of dry ingredients and thoroughly mix everything together. The result should be a clay-like mass. Delia Smith, whose recipe I took as a base, explains this: if you fill a spoon with the prepared mixture and hit the wall of the bowl, it should simply slide off the spoon.

If the mixture seems very dry, you can add a little beer. Now the bowl needs to be covered with a towel and sent out to sleep for 1 day.

When you are ready to cook the pudding, you must carefully and generously grease the mold with oil and lay out the mixture, pressing tightly. The top of the consistency should be at least half a centimeter below the edge of the pan. Now you need to take baking paper, create a fold on it and cut out a circle with a diameter 3-4 centimeters larger than the top of the mold. Do the same with foil. The fold is needed for steam escaping during cooking. First cover the mold with paper, then with foil, tie it tightly with twine and create a handle from the same twine, with which you can simply remove the mold from the boiling water. Place a saucer or plate upside down in a huge saucepan, and place the pudding prepared for cooking on it.

The bottom of the pudding pan does not need to touch the bottom of the pan. Once I placed a silicone round mold in a pan, it turned out to be comfortable. But there must be water between the silicone and the bottom of the pan, otherwise the silicone will weld and crack. Pour boiling water into the pan until it reaches approximately the middle of the pan, cover with a lid and cook the pudding for 6-8 hours at a very low simmer, adding boiling water from time to time as it evaporates. It is not allowed to add cool water! Previously, I cooked the pudding for the allotted 8 hours, but after reducing the time by 2 hours, I did not see any difference. Cool the cooked pudding.

Tie it with the freshest portion of paper and foil and leave it in a cool, dry place until the holiday. Lacking a spacious British pantry, I keep it on the windowsill.

On day “X”, heat it in boiling water for 1-1.5 hours. The most common and quick method is to place (turn) the pudding on a suitable dish, and then heat it in the microwave at low power. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream - it's very nice to pile them on top of black pudding - or with alcohol sauce.

A perfectly kneaded and cooked pudding just comes out of the mold, there shouldn’t be any problems with this. There is a problem with the form itself. Pudding tins don't line up in orderly rows on the shelves of crockery shops outside Britain, and they're not available everywhere in London either. You can adapt a salad bowl or bowl of a suitable shape and size. It is only necessary that the bowl have an edge to which you can fasten the rope when tying it, and that it be heat-resistant, otherwise all the work will go into the trash bin along with the burst bowl.

But if Christmas pudding still seems complicated and almost incomprehensible, you can practice with the most ordinary savory pudding, reminiscent of vanilla sponge cake with caramel sauce.

For a 1.5 liter mold you need:
for the sponge cake:
250g softened butter plus a little more for greasing the mold
250g sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp.
vanilla extract 250 g flour
1 tsp.
baking powder 50 ml milk
for caramel sauce:
75 g sugar
25 g butter
50 ml heavy cream

To make a sponge cake, use a mixer to beat the butter and sugar until creamy and homogeneous.
Add the eggs one at a time into the mixture, continuing to beat, then the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl, then stir the flour into the butter-egg mixture in portions, ensuring that the mixture is homogeneous and free of lumps. Add milk to the mixture at the end. Prepare (butter) the mold and tie as above for the Christmas pudding. Cook for 2 hours until a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake. To make caramel sauce, dissolve sugar in 2 tablespoons of water in a small saucepan and place over low heat. Bring to a boil and cook at a low simmer, without stirring, until thick black caramel appears. Place the butter in a saucepan, stir until dissolved, remove from heat, pour in the cream and stir again. Turn the finished pudding onto a suitable dish, pour over the caramel sauce and serve.

It is curious that British Christmas in its modern form does not have such an old history. The Anglican Church was suspicious of the loud and hearty celebration of Christmas, not without reason seeing in it echoes of pagan celebrations. Why the celebration of Christmas was even banned for some time. Modern indispensable signs of British Christmas originate during the long reign of Queen Victoria and arose from the light hand of her adored wife, Prince Albert. In other words, the traditions are a little Germanic. Including the crowned tree and the exchange of gifts that previously took place on New Year's Day. By the way, in Scotland, where the Puritan ideas of preacher John Knox were very strong, Christmas was not actually celebrated until the 50s of the 20th century. Until now, for the Scots, as for almost all of us, the main holiday is New Year.

Christmas pudding

The usual English Christmas pudding is something that no Christmas in Britain is complete without. Some cook on their own, often using an ancient family recipe, some buy it, but Christmas pudding is on every Christmas table. At the same time, they bring it in festively, pouring strong alcohol on it and setting it on fire.

The tradition of baking Christmas pudding dates back to the Middle Ages. Once upon a time, and in some families to this day, Christmas pudding was prepared 4 weeks before Christmas, and sometimes earlier. According to tradition, it was baked on the Sunday before the start of the pre-Christmas fast and this Sunday was called “ Stirring Sunday”, because any member of the family, or at least any child, had to take turns stirring the mass to make the pudding. Then the pudding was prepared, and later it slowly ripened in a cold place, waiting for its time, in other words, Christmas. Its taste became more luxurious over time. Nowadays, not many people make Christmas pudding so many weeks in advance. In general, even 5-7 days of ripening do their job, although you can serve it even on the day of production.

Having re-read a huge number of Christmas pudding recipes, from the old ones to the newest ones, having re-read the recipes in the books of such famous family English cooks as Delia Smith or Merry Berry, and even revised the recipe from Nigel 's Lawson (but she is the last one from whom you can find something very ordinary), as well as several other chefs, least respected by respectable English housewives, I have developed my interpretation of the usual English Christmas pudding, summarizing the information collected, and I bring this version to your attention.

Typically, Christmas pudding is made with beef fat. It's hard to find him here. In my case, it was unrealistic. Almost everyone recommends replacing it with hard types of margarine, which is not acceptable for me. I don’t use this kind of food waste in my own kitchen. Therefore, subconsciously, I replaced it with butter. Although the problem with it is that the melting point of the oil is lower than that of beef perinephric fat and it begins to melt earlier during production, which ultimately gives a less porous pudding than it would have with beef fat. But to minimize this problem, I first crushed the cool butter, and then froze it and added it frozen to the pudding mixture, and then quickly poured it into the prepared bowls and started cooking. To at least slightly preserve porosity. And the pudding turned out to be quite porous. With a pleasant buttery taste. Maybe it’s better this way, since I don’t associate beef fat much with dessert.

Prepare Christmas pudding in a bowl in a water bath. There are special pudding bowls that have a proper shape and a wide edge under which you tie a foil-covered bowl of pudding, which helps to fix this string to the bowl. In fact, you can cook in any heat-resistant bowl, or even in a small pot. In the recipe, I carefully describe what to create and how to create it. Then you need to cool the pudding and send it out for “ripening”. After which, it is necessary to re-heat the Christmas pudding in the same way, only significantly shorter in time. Christmas pudding is served warm or cool, whichever you prefer.

This amount of ingredients is enough for two small puddings, or one large one. If you cook one large one, then you need to increase the cooking time. I also write about this in the recipe below.

Ingredients

• 450 grams of various dried fruits (I used chopped prunes, two types of raisins, dried cranberries and cherries)
• 50 grams of candied fruits (various can be used)
• 150 ml cognac or rum
• 1 medium apple, peeled and grated
• Juice and zest of 1 orange
• 150 grams of dark muscovado cane sugar (can be replaced with light cane sugar or regular snow-white sugar)
• 3 testicles
• 120 g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 80 g breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp Christmas spice consistency
• Cognac or rum for lighting on the day of serving
• Butter for greasing dishes
• 125 g cool butter

1) The day before making Christmas pudding, place all the dried and candied fruits in a deep bowl. Pour in cognac and let it sit for a day, stirring occasionally.

Grate the butter on a large grater and place in the freezer.

2) The next day, grease 0.5-0.6 liter pudding bowls with butter at room temperature.

Cut a parchment circle to the size of the upper part of the bowl. Remove the cooled butter from the freezer.

3) In a deep bowl, mix flour, spices, baking powder and breadcrumbs.

4) Beat the eggs almost until smooth in a separate bowl.

5) Place dried fruits, sugar, apples, orange juice and zest in a large bowl that is comfortable for stirring.

6) Add eggs to the dried fruits and mix well.

7) Add cool oil and mix everything again.

Add the mixture of dry ingredients and carefully mix the mixture again with a spatula.

9) As quickly as possible, while the butter is still hard, pour the mixture into the prepared bowls and cover with a parchment circle.

10) Cover the top of the bowl with 2 layers of foil and tie tightly with kitchen string.

11) Carefully place the bowl in a deep saucepan and fill 2/3 of the bowl with cool water.

12) Cover the pan with a lid and put on medium heat, bring to a boil, put the pan with the pudding on low heat, and cook for 2 hours from the moment it boils. From time to time, add water, which will boil away.

NB: If you cook the pudding in one large bowl, then increase the cooking time to 3 hours.

13) After the indicated time, turn off the heat and leave the Christmas pudding until it cools completely. After cooling, put the pudding to ripen in a cold, dry space, perhaps a pantry or a room without heating, for at least 5 days, and preferably for two weeks, and if it’s completely normal, then you can even leave it for up to 4 weeks. Over time, the taste of the pudding becomes richer.

14) On the day of serving, again place the bowl of Christmas pudding in a deep saucepan and fill 2/3 of the bowl with cool water. Cover the pan with a lid and put on medium heat, bring to a boil, put the pan with the pudding on low heat, and cook for 1 hour from the moment it boils. (If you cook the whole mass in a large bowl, then 1.5 hours.)

15) Remove the bowl of pudding from the pan and leave for about 10 minutes. Remove cooking string, foil and parchment.

The pudding can be served warm or cool. It all depends on taste preferences.

Carefully invert the pudding onto a serving plate and serve.

At the table, pour 50-80 ml of cognac over the surface of the Christmas pudding and immediately set it on fire.

If desired, you can prepare British cream, in other words, a watery custard, before the pudding.

To do this, beat 2 yolks with 1 tsp. starch, 1/2 bag of vanilla sugar or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract and 50 grams of sugar. Bring 300 ml of milk to a boil and pour into the yolks in a narrow stream, continuing to whisk. Then put the mixture on low heat and continue cooking until thickened. The cream should have the thickness of a not very thick sauce.

British Christmas pudding

Real British pudding is worth experiencing at least once. It is a fascinating culinary experience and an extraordinary journey of taste.

Christmas holidays are an excellent occasion to indulge in Tradition, including culinary tradition. I saw that at this time there was a desire to follow the canons deeply and carefully, without deviating one step from them. What are the canons in cooking? Ancient recipes that have stood the test of time, methods of preparing dishes molded into rules, grandmother’s memoirs about great-grandmother’s recipes for holidays, the very titles of which take your breath away and make time come alive.

Each country has its own Christmas dishes. I was currently learning how to make a British culinary hit - Christmas pudding. It turned out to be not difficult, perhaps because I have long been interested in cooking puddings and have already prepared quite a lot of them.

What does Christmas pudding mean to the British ? Not much, not much, as the central image of a ceremonial table. You can fill the whole table with unique modern dishes, but it’s impossible not to put pudding, because without it there won’t be a real Holiday. Since ancient times, British Christmas pudding has been prepared in every family, and each has its own version of the recipe, with an abundance of secrets and subtleties.

What is British Christmas pudding?

About the form . British pudding is characterized by a dome-shaped shape - in memory of the very first puddings, which were prepared in specially sewn fabric bags.

Ingredients. The composition is usually simple, like all puddings: bread crumbs and flour, eggs, sugar, fat or lard (you can replace butter as needed), also fragrant spices and a lot of dried fruits soaked in alcohol. In essence, Christmas pudding is a type of bread snack, which is what it was from the beginning. As for the combination of lard and dried fruits, it is very English to serve sweets with fatty ones. Fat, as well as the sweet taste, for a long time were only affordable for poor people, and most of them could afford them only on holidays... And besides, it is very, unexpectedly tasty - this is how the development of the recipe works.

Another variety of Christmas pudding is plum-pudding, a plum pudding, it is prepared using the same technology (water bath, maturing) on ​​the basis of oatmeal cooked in meat broth.

Manufacturing . British pudding is always prepared in a water bath, and this continues for several hours. Housewives usually prepared several huge puddings right away, designed for a huge family. They were then stored in a cold room, where they were good to eat for a year, in other words until the following Christmas. In addition, British pudding is prepared 2-4 weeks before the holiday, and during this time it continues to ripen. As a result, the taste becomes very powerful and catchy - even the most experienced gourmand will not eat more than 1 piece.

Submission . Before serving, British pudding is often flambéed with a sprinkle of alcohol. The pudding itself is certainly served with British cream or lightly whipped cream to refresh the deep, richly spicy taste.

Ingredients

• black raisins 50 gr
• dried apricots 50 gr
• dates 50 gr
• alcohol 50 g (cognac, rum, brandy)
• interior fat, lard or butter 65 g
• sugar 65 gr
• flour 40 gr
• yesterday's bread 35 g
• egg 1 piece
• zest of half a lemon
• baking spice mixture 0.5 teaspoon (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves)

Manufacturing

First you need to prepare the filling. Remove the pits from the dates and cut them into small pieces. Cut the dried apricots into the same pieces.

Mix raisins, dates and dried apricots, pour in alcohol and leave for a couple of hours at room temperature, or better yet, overnight (that is, at night) in the refrigerator.

Mix softened fat (butter) with sugar and grind.

Add lemon zest, grated on a small grater, and spices.

Now add the egg to the mixture and mash until smooth and creamy.

Grind the bread in a blender until crumbly.

Mix bread crumbs with flour.

Add the resulting dry mixture to the oil base.

Now add dried fruits to the “dough” along with the alcohol in which they were soaked.

Grease a sphere-shaped heat-resistant deep plate with oil and place the pudding in it, compacting it tightly so that there are no voids inside.
Place a piece of parchment on top.

Then cover the plate with foil and secure it with threads or twine.
Now prepare a wide pan, put a piece of tissue on the bottom (the structure of tissues of living organisms is studied by the science of histology) , on which place a bowl of pudding. Pour boiling water into the pan until it reaches halfway into the bowl.

Cook the pudding in a water bath for 3.5 hours.
As the water boils, add more. The larger the pudding you make, the longer you need to cook it.

When the pudding is ready, remove the foil and parchment and cover with fresh parchment and another sheet of foil. Cool and store.

The pudding can be served either cool or warm. And, of course, don’t forget about cream or cream - it will be even tastier!