Chrismas pudding in a basin

My aunts and Nanna always made their Christmas puddings with suet and tied them in a cloth.
The first time my mother tried to make a traditional pudding she ended up with a soggy mess, with more fruit in the saucepan than in the cloth.
I know now the secret is to boil the cloth first to close up the weave but Mum solved the problem by making her next pudding in a basin.
The Davis pudding has been made in a basin ever since and I have continued the tradition.
But being more time poor than my Mum I have simplified her recipe to make a Christmas pudding that tastes good and is a whiz to make.
The quantities below are enough for one very large pudding or two smaller ones.
I follow Mum's tradition and make two smaller puddings, one for Christmas dinner (it serves 10-12); the other for New Year's Day. Leftovers van be eaten cold for breakfast at any time during the Christmas holiday break.
I cook my puddings in stainless steel pudding basins with clip-on lids but Mum always made hers in two crockery basins (the white or cream ones that most kitchenware shops or discount department stores usually have).
If using a crockery basin you will need to put two layers of foil over the top of the pudding, after covering it with two layers of baking paper and tie tightly with string to stop any water getting into the pudding while it cooks.

Here is my simple recipe for a Christmas pudding in a basin:

1 x 1kg pack of mixed fruit (choose one with lots of raisins and sultanas and not too much mixed peel)
1 x 750gm pack of fruit medley mix (Coles and Safeway usually have it at this time of year)
250g plain flour
1 level teaspoon nutmeg
1 level teaspoon mixed spice
pinch of salt
250gm white sugar
250gm soft breadcrumbs (turn slices of bread into crumbs in a whiz or using a fine grater - the bread is easier to grate if it is a few days old but whatever you have available will be fine)
300gm butter or margarine
6 eggs
6 tablespoons brandy or whisky
300ml milk

Grease a large pudding basin (or two small ones).
Sift flour with spices and salt.
Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add fruit, breadcrumbs and sugar.
Beat the eggs, add the milk and brandy (or whisky) and pour the mixture into the dry ingredients.
Mix well (the mixture looks a bit like sloppy porridge).
Place in the prepared basin (or basins). The mixture should be a couple of centimetres below the top of the basin to allow it to rise a bit while cooking.
Cover with two layers of baking paper (gently push it down to the surface of the pudding).
Then add the lid (or a couple of layers of foil tied down with string).
Place each basin in a saucepan with enough boiling water to reach halfway up the side of the basin.
Cover the saucepan with a lid and boil gently for 6 hours (if one large pudding) or 5 hours (if two smaller ones), checking the water level regularly and topping up with more boiling water when necessary to keep the level about halfway up the basin.
The pudding will keep in its basin in the fridge for at least a year but can be used as soon as you want.
I usually make mine about a month before Christmas but this year I am totally disorganised and will start making it later tonight, just in time for Christmas.
On the day you want to eat the pudding, place the basin in a saucepan as before and boil gently for another two hours.
Serve with brandy custard, brandy cream, brandy sauce or all three, with a dollop of vanilla icecream to make it truly decadent.
Any leftover pudding can be sliced and heated in a microwave, or in a colander over simmering water, or served cold with cream or icecream.
Happy Christmas!
(I will put my recipes for brandy cream, brandy sauce and brandy custard on my blog later in the week, time permitting).

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.