Christmas Pudding in a Cloth

CHRISTMAS puddings should always be made in the first week in November, according to my cooking bible, the 1974 Cordon Bleu Monthly Cookery Course.
That’s probably why my friend Jamie is desperately seeking a recipe for a traditional plum pudding and put in a request to Jan’s Kitchen.
I can still remember my Mum’s first, and only, attempt at making a pudding in a cloth the way my grandmother and aunts made them.
The pudding oozed out into the water leaving a soggy, if tasty, mess in the cloth.
Then Mum discovered her culinary guru Jean Bowring made her pudding in a bowl. What was good enough for Jean was good enough for us and from then on at Christmas we ate delicious cakey bowl-cooked puddings.
When I inherited responsibility for the Christmas meal, I continued Mum’s tradition.
I have adapted a few recipes to make my own version of the traditional Christmas pudding but have never made it in a cloth.
So to meet Jamie’s recipe request I headed to my black box and recipe book collection.
The search turned up lots of variations on the traditional plum pud but only two mentioned boiling the result in a cloth.
Both assumed you knew how to prepare the cloth, which I knew I did not.
My friend Marion came to the rescue.
``You have to boil the calico first,’’ Marion said.
She said the boiling removed size and other chemicals from the pudding cloth and made it shrink, closing up the holes in the weave.
While the cloth is still hot from boiling, she sprinkles it liberally with flour.
The heat of the cloth ``cooks’’ the flour, forming a crust. This keeps the pudding mix in the cloth.
Then she adds the pudding mix, pulls the calico up tightly into the traditional pudding shape and ties the top firmly, leaving a calico ``stalk’’.
Marion boils a large pudding for about four hours, a small one for about two hours then hangs it to dry ready for Christmas day.
On the day, she boils the pudding again for a couple of hours and serves it with traditional sauces, such as brandy sauce, brandy custard or brandy cream.
At our house we can’t decide which sauce to have so usually have all three, followed by a much-needed lie down.
I will add my Christmas pudding recipe and recipes for the various sauces later this week but here are the two recipes I found for Christmas pudding boiled in a cloth.
The first comes from a recipe book put out by the mothers at Tarnagulla Primary School in about 1981.
The second comes from a recipe leaflet put out by Sunbeam Dried Fruits.
One uses butter, the other suet. My nanna and aunts always used suet, which they bought from the butcher and grated.
The Cordon Bleu cookery course says suet from the butcher is superior to the dry suet available in supermarkets.
Tarnagulla in the 1980s was renowned for its good cooks. ``Ladies’’ had to bring a plate to golf days at Tarnagulla. It was worth the drive from Melbourne to play on the ``sand scrape’’ course just for the afternoon tea.

One of the good cooks was Beth Taig.

Here is Beth Taig’s Christmas Plum Pudding.
(The recipe is in pounds and ounces and I have translated it into grams. I would usually translate them to the nearest 5g but in this case have rounded to an easier amount as a few extra raisins and so on will make no difference to the result. I have also made a few changes in the method section to make it clearer.)
Ingredients
500g (1 lb or 16oz) plain flour
250g (½ lb or 8oz) currants
500g (1 lb or 16 oz) butter
500g (1 lb or 16 oz) sultanas
2 cups bread crumbs
2 tab marmalade jam
6 eggs
1 pkt (about 375g) raisins
250g (½ lb or 8 oz) sugar
1 pkt (about 375g) mixed fruit
1 cup sherry
1 teas mixed spice
1 des cinnamon
1 teas carb soda (bicarbonate of soda) dissolved in boiling water
Nuts if wanted

Method
Soak fruit overnight with sherry. Rub together shredded butter and flour. Put bread crumbs and 1 teas mixed spice and 1 des cinnamon into flour. Beat together eggs and sugar. Mix together well all fruit, flour and egg mixture. Add nuts (if desired) and marmalade jam. Lastly add the carb soda. Put on a VERY well floured damped cloth and tie tightly. Boil 5-6 hours.
NB Damp cloth in boiling water and wring out. Also place an enamel plate under pudding so it doesn’t catch on bottom while boiling.

Here is Sunbeam Dried Fruits' Traditional Christmas Pudding
Ingredients
375g (12 oz) Sunbeam seeded raisins, chopped
375g (12 oz) Sunbeam sultanas
250g (8oz) Sunbeam currants
185g (6oz) Sunbeam prunes, chopped
185g (6oz) chopped mixed peel
Grated rind of 1 lemon
90g (3 oz) blanched almonds, chopped (optional)
1 large carrot, grated
250g (8 oz) soft white breadcrumbs
250g (8 oz) butter or finely shredded suet
250g (8 oz) white sugar
125g (4 oz) plain flour
½ teas salt
½ teas nutmeg
1 teas mixed spice
4 eggs
¾ cup milk
½ cup brandy and ½ cup stout (or 1 cup orange juice)

Method

Grease two small or one large basin. Mix all the dry ingredients together. Beat the eggs and add all moist ingredients. Mix the dry and moist ingredients together. Fill the mixture into the basins or, if preferred, use a well-seasoned pudding cloth. Place two thicknesses of foil over the basins and tie securely. Boil steadily for six hours for the large pudding and four hours for the small. On the day the pudding is to be served, boil for one hour.

May your Christmas be bright and your pudding a good one.

Mrs Resak's Almond Crescents

WHEN I was growing up in Melbourne's western suburbs in the 1950s many of my neighbours were European refugees.
My house was opposite a railway line, just near the railway station.
My best friend Kathleen (or Katti) lived on the opposite side of the tracks.
Kathleen was Hungarian. Her parents were in the Hungarian Resistance and fled for their lives ahead of the Russian invasion by skiing across the border, leaving Kathleen and her brother behind with their grandmother.
Kathleen and I met at primary school in about 1960 when she and her brother were finally reunited with their parents in Australia.
Another neighbour was Maurice Chevalier. When he arrived in Australia the press mobbed him, thinking he was the famous French singer.
He wasn't a singer - but he was very French. We would stand gobsmacked when he came home from work and swept his wife Eileen into a very European embrace. Our parents did nothing like that.
Eileen was Australian but had studied French and they had probably met at the Alliance Francaise.
Eileen was the link between the Australian-born women in the neighbourhood and the new arrivals, most of whom spoke little or no English.
They would move into a group of houses on the other side of the railway line, live there for a few months and then leave. I have often wondered since if the houses were owned or rented by some sort of group that worked with refugees to help them settle in to their new country.
One year a group of refugees arrived just before Christmas.
I was too young to know much about where they had come from but I remember they seemed very sad.
Eileen Chevalier organised a morning tea so the refugee women could meet some of their neighbours.
They didn't speak much French either but they understood she wanted them to ``bring a plate''.
When they arrived at the morning tea, one woman introduced herself shyly as ``Mrs Resak'' (at least that was what her name sounded like to me). She brought a plate of small almond crescents, smothered in vanilla-flavoured icing sugar.
They were the most exotic biscuits I had ever eaten - light shortbreads that melted in my mouth.
Mrs Resak wrote out the recipe for me and Eileen translated it into English. The ingredients were given in grams but Eileen converted them to ounces.
I have made the crescents most Christmases since then and and always think of Mrs Resak when I do. I never met her again.
I hope you enjoy the crescents as much as my family do.

Mrs Resak's Almond Crescents
Ingredients110g (4 oz) plain flour
50g (1 3/4 oz) almond meal
95g (3 1/3 oz) butter
35g (1 1/3 oz) sugar

Method Mix all the ingredients together by hand, squeezing the mixture through your fingers.
Form into small crescents or ``Napoleon's hat'' shapes.
Bake in a slow oven 160C (325F) until pale brown, about 15 minutes.
While still warm, not hot, roll in vanilla-flavoured icing sugar.

Mrs Resak's vanilla-flavoured icing sugar
Mix two packets of vanilla (or vanillin) sugar with 225g (8oz) icing sugar.
Note: This makes a huge quantity, and vanilla sugar is expensive. So I usually shake a few teaspoons of vanilla sugar (from the spice section of the supermarket) in about a cup of icing sugar.
That makes enough vanilla sugar for a batch of crescents.

Chocolate and Almond Cake

The first time I baked Elizabeth David's ``chocolate and almond cake'' I was hooked.

The cake is simple to make, oh-so-rich in flavour and texture, and the perfect accompaniment to summer berries and cream.

This is a cake for special occasions and a decadent delight for breakfast. Waiting until afternoon tea time to eat the leftovers is a recipe for disappointment. Someone will have beaten you to it.

I first saw the recipe in a column food writer Jill Dupleix contributed to a series called ``My Favourite Chocolate Cake'' in Melbourne newspaper The Age in the 1990s.

But the recipe is much older than that.

It comes from David's book French Provincial Cooking, first published in 1960.

The cake's richness is the direct opposite of the ``bigger than Texas'' blight that has driven the obesity epidemic in much of the western world. It has none of the blandness that makes it easy to eat more than you should.

Like much French cooking it relies on the flavour and texture of fresh and rich ingredients to sate the senses.

A thin slice of this cake is heaven; a thick wedge would be sickening.

My much-loved newspaper cutting is yellow and creased after more than a decade in my ``Little Black Box''.

But last year I went in search of the original book, after hearing television foodie Rick Stein sing David's praises during a radio interview on ABC FM.

David travelled extensively through the Mediterranean countries, particularly Italy and France. Her books include both recipes and experiences collected on her travels. She has also written about cooking in England.

I have seen secondhand copies of many of her titles listed for a few dollars on Amazon. Copies are harder to find in Australia but it's worth keeping an eye out in secondhand bookshops.

So here is my favourite chocolate cake.

NB In this recipe I have given the quantities from Elizabeth David's original recipe in brackets. These are in imperial measures - in this case weights in ounces (oz) and temperature in Fahrenheit.

The metric measures are from Jill Dupleix's version, as this is the one I have always made.

I hope soon to try the original, which has slightly less chocolate and is baked in a slightly cooler oven, and will let you know which I prefer. I have changed the method slightly to reflect the way I usually make the cake.

Elizabeth David's Chocolate and Almond Cake

Ingredients

200g (4 oz) bitter chocolate

100g (3 oz) butter

100g (3 oz) caster sugar

100g (3 oz) ground almonds

3 eggs (separated)

1 tab rum or brandy

1 tab black coffee

icing sugar (optional)

Method

Break chocolate into small pieces, add the rum (or brandy) and coffee and melt in a heat-proof bowl over simmering water, or in a microwave.

Stir until the chocolate is melted. Add the butter, sugar and ground almonds and stir over low heat for a few minutes until all the ingredients are blended smoothly together.

Remove from the heat and add well-beaten egg yolks. Fold in the stiffly-beaten egg whites.

Turn into a lightly-buttered shallow sponge-cake tin, 18-20cm in diameter (7 or 8 inches) or a tart tin with a removable base.

[I use a sponge tin and line the base with baking paper.]

Stand the tin on a baking sheet and bake in a very low oven, 160C (290F) for about 45 minutes.

Allow to cool in the tin. Turn out carefully.

Serve it as it is or dust with a little icing sugar.

Perfect as a dessert with summer berries, cream or icecream.

Pasta Bake

Today's recipe is for Catherine's friend Laura, who asked for the recipe for the leftovers Catherine has been heating up in the Year 12 common room this year.

This dish is quick and simple but a family favourite.

Salmon Pasta Bake

Ingredients:

1 can (415 gm) pink salmon

1 bottle Leggo's Creamy Tomato and Mozzarella Pasta Bake

250g penne (or similar dried pasta)

1 cup grated parmesan cheese (or ``Pizza Cheese'' mix or grated cheddar if preferred)

Method:

Cook pasta until tender, drain and place in a pyrex (or similar) ovenproof dish (a large oblong dish suitable for lasagne is ideal).

Add salmon (remove bones), and bottle of sauce, and stir until evenly distributed through the pasta, breaking the salmon up into bite-sized pieces.

Top with grated cheese.

Bake in a moderately-hot oven (about 190C-200C) for 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Serves 6.

Serve with a green salad or steamed vegetables.

Hint: I keep packets of grated parmesan and grated Pizza cheese mix in the freezer, ready to add to pasta, omelettes and similar dishes to add a bit of extra zing to simple food. It's a great way to add calcium to the diet of people who don't like to drink milk.

Apricot or Raspberry Slice

I promised a sweet treat today so here is a family favourite.

My Aunty Aggie always made an apricot version whenever we visited. If she didn't have any on hand, she would get out her cooking bowl and bake it while we waited. That's how easy it is.

Aunty Ces made a raspberry version and it's her version I have included below because that's the one in my black box.

The original recipe gives ingredients in pounds and ounces, as do most recipes from the 1960s or earlier, before metric measures became the norm.

I have converted the weights to metrics and included the originals in brackets.

Often the original amounts use even multiples of ingredients (eg 2oz butter, 4 oz sugar, 1 egg etc) making them easier to learn off by heart, so I usually use scales switched to ounces and pounds for my old favourites. If you do this, remember that old-fashioned cooks used measuring cups that were slightly smaller than the metric ones used today so don't overfill the cups, err on the lighter side. (I haven't mastered the way to present fractions in this program so a-cup-and-a-half is given as 1 1/2 cups etc).

Most of the cooks I knew in my childhood measured ingredients using an old kitchen cup (one from the everyday crockery set that was chipped or cracked), along with milk bottles and basic cutlery that had seen better days. A tablespoon was exactly that, the big spoon from the cutlery set used for dishing up, a dessert spoon was the sort used for sweets, but the size was more consistent (and usually bigger) than the more stylish ones used today.

The kitchens of my childhood didn't stretch to special measuring cups, spoons and jugs. Which brings me to my overriding cooking philosophies:

• recipes are for tweaking;
• near enough is usually good enough;
• cooking should be fun not stressful;
• if a recipe doesn't work kids will still eat the results and there's always next time; and
• a good cook cleans up afterwards, or better still on the go (that one comes courtesy of my mother).

Cooking is really just chemistry in action. Lots of things can change the result - room temperature, humidity, the size of an egg, the diet of the chicken, the type of grass the cows ate before they were milked, and lots more.

So don't get hung up on measuring ingredients to the last grain. Just get out a bowl (or a few), scales, the odd bit of cutlery and your favourite pots, pans or tins and enjoy a bit of culinary therapy. Your friends and family will love you for it and you will probably cut your carbon footprint as well.

What could be better than that?

Aunty Ces's slice, that's what.

So here it is:

Apricot/Raspberry Slice

Ingredients:

Base

55g (2 oz) butter

110g (4 oz) castor sugar
170g (6 oz) self raising flour
1 egg.
Method:
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and beat until mixture becomes pale and smooth.
Mix in flour (sift it if you like but I usually don't bother unless it is lumpy).
Grease a slice tin with butter or line it with baking paper.
My slice tin is about 28cm x 18cm (11inches x 7 inches).
Push base mixture into tin with floured hands, gradually spreading it until it covers the bottom of the tin fairly evenly.
Cover with raspberry or apricot jam, enough to thinly cover the base mixture.
Topping
1 1/2 cups coconut
1/2 cup sugar (ordinary sugar if you have it, not castor sugar)
1 egg
Method:
Mix coconut, sugar and egg together and spread lightly over the jam. There's no need to squash it down. The oven will bind it together.
Bake in a moderate oven (about 180C or 160C if fan-forced oven) until golden (about 20-25 minutes).
When cold, cut into squares and keep in an airtight container.
This slice is great with coffee or tea, as an after-school treat, or with custard and/or icecream as an easy dessert.

Beer and beef casserole

Here is my favourite simple winter meal-in-a-pot.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1kg beef (cubed) - (I use round steak or bladebone steak)

two shallots, diced (or 1 large onion)

2 tab olive oil

1 tab tomato paste

1 small bottle light beer (or whatever sort is available)

1 clove garlic, finely chopped (optional)

salt, pepper to taste

sprig thyme, if available

1 fresh bay leaf, if available

6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered

parsley, chopped

1 tab plain flour, for thickening (optional)

Method:

Brown cubed beef in olive oil on medium/high on stove top. Add diced shallots or onion. When the meat is browned and the shallots/onion soft, add the flour and stir to coat meat in flour.

Add quartered potatoes, herbs, tomato paste, seasoning and beer. Stir.

Bring to boil then reduce heat and simmer gently for about 2 hours, or until meat is tender.

Add chopped parsley and serve.

Alternative:

For a one-pot version, cook as above but add a selection of vegetables with the potatoes, such as 2 carrots (diced or sliced), 1/2 cup peas, a tin of diced tomatoes, a handful of diced mushrooms - enough vegetables for 6 serves.

Like all good casseroles it tastes even better the next day and is good served on a thick slice of toast for a hearty lunch on a winter's day.