Counting my blessings
So I spoke to me Me Ma yesterday. I’m sure she won’t mind me telling you that she’s had a bit of a rough time recently. She’s just retired, too, and that’s a big life change when you’ve worked at the same place donkey’s years; your colleagues become your friends, and suddenly not seeing them every day is a pretty big deal. ‘Still’, she said, ‘when I get a bit down, I remind myself to count my blessings: I have my health and strength, and there are plenty of people worse off than me’.
Too right, said I. We had a chat with the fellas about Christmas: you don’t want to terrify the little sods, but we tried to explain how the credit crunch affected everyone, even Santa, and that maybe Christmas would be a little smaller this year. Still, they’re going to have a house filled with fun and laughter for Christmas, stuffed with Uncles, Auntie L, their cousins and their Grandma, which will definitely make up for it. I told me Ma about Lou and Little C. They came to dinner on Sunday evening as D was out with Hubby. When I offered her sprouts, Lou said ‘erm, can I just have one?’ (I’m sure she hates them, but didn’t want to be rude). After dinner, the boys went off to play Xbox or PS3 or whatever, and Lou and I sat and watched MTV and talked about phones (she wants a pink one for Christmas) and shopping and stuff. She told me that they’d got all their Christmas decorations out, and I was struck by how hard it must be for them: unpacking everything that their Mum had packed away last year. Mr and Mrs Lovely are fantastic and do so much for D and the kids, but blimey it can’t be easy. Don’t get me wrong: they’re kids and they’re not perfect, but they’re always upbeat and they’re absolutely no trouble to look after. Their Mum would be so proud of them.
So like my Ma, I’m counting my blessings today. My kitchen is warm and fuggy with the delicious smell of the Christmas cake that is cooking in the oven, I’m filling the freezer in anticipation of my family arriving and I’ve just made a fire, which will be crackling away nicely by the time #1 gets home (#2 is in bed with a cold – don’t worry, he’s happily watching Monty Python’s Holy Grail on his PSP).
And next time I hear someone moaning, I shall wish that like the Ghost of Christmas Present, I could transport them to the window of the house next door, where two little ones are preparing for their first Christmas without their Mum.
Christmas Pudding: step by step. Make a wish!
Right, so now it’s 1st December and my self imposed ban on the C-word is hereby lifted. Woohoo! So puddings, then. Officially, one should make one’s Christmas Pudding on stir-up Sunday. I think it’s supposed to be the last Sunday before Advent (this year it was 23rd November), but if you’re a total heathen, like moi, and you don’t really give a sod, you just need to make your puds about a month before you eat them to give them a chance to mature. The trouble with testing Christmas Pud recipes is obviously that the ingredients are rather expensive, and you can’t keep fiddling with the recipe without actually bankrupting yourself, but you know me, I can’t leave these things alone so I’ve twiddled, fiddled and basically made Hubby a bit cross with my excessive dried fruit buying (sorry darling). And finally, I can say I think this one is just right. As you know, a recipe is a guide, not a commandment, so if there’s something you don’t like, add less or substitute something else (for example, Nigella uses sherry for all the liquid, whereas I like mine a little less alcoholic so I use tea). Here goes, then:
500g dried fruit (a mixture of raisins, sultanas, de-stoned ready to eat prunes, cranberries – whatever – as long they’re small and wrinkly, chuck ‘em in)
1 tbsp Maraschino cherries, halved (optional, but it’s nice to see a little glistening bit of red when you cut it open)
1 lemon
100ml black tea (I used Earl Grey)
100ml Morgan’s Spiced Rum (or whatever booze you like), plus extra for the cook
1 cinnamon stick, snapped in half
100g self raising flour
100g fresh white breadcrumbs
150g veggie suet
150g dark muscovado sugar
25g almonds or pistachio nuts, chopped
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice
3 eggs, beaten
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp black treacle
1 Bramley apple, grated
First, then, weigh out the fruit, then have a good look through it and remove any stray stems. If you’re using prunes, make sure they’re de-stoned and snipped into little pieces. Finely grate the lemon zest (as usual, don’t push too hard – you want to avoid the bitter pith), then juice it as well. Add the zest and juice to the fruit then brew up the tea (one tea bag is fine for that amount of water) and pour it over the fruit, along with the rum and the cherries. Add the cinnamon stick and stir it all up. Leave the whole shooting match to steep (make sure it’s not a metal bowl) overnight, stirring occasionally if you remember.
The next day, then, (stay with me here) weigh out all the dry ingredients and combine them in a huge bowl. The muscovado sugar can be a bit lumpy so you might need to sieve it to break up any lumps.
Take the steeped fruit and remove the cinnamon stick pieces. Add the eggs, honey, treacle and grated apple. Stir well, then you can add all that into the dry ingredients. Give it a really good stir (get everyone to take a turn to stir and make a wish). Now butter one of those big, lidded plastic basins (3 pint/1.7 litre) and bung in your mixture. Put on the lid, then cover it in foil. If your basin doesn’t have a lid you’ll need to use buttered greaseproof paper, then foil, then tie it tightly with string (or you can tie it in a muslin, or use one of those special moulds…blah blah, I’m not your mother, do what you like).
To steam it, you can use a steamer if you’re posh, but I haven’t got one so I just used a huge saucepan and balanced the basin inside it on a circular metal pastry cutter so it wasn’t sitting on the bottom of the pan. Add boiling water about halfway up the basin and put the lid on the saucepan. Steam for 5 hours, making sure you go back every so often to top up the boiling water.
And that’s it, you’re done. Let it cool then stash it away for Christmas day when it’ll need to steam for about another 2.5 to 3 hours (don’t worry if it gets a bit longer, it won’t ruin it).
BTW: If you want to make mini puddings instead, like I did above, remember to put a teeny piece of buttered greaseproof paper in the bottom of your ramekin, otherwise you’ll never get the buggers out. Then you can just cover them with foil, put them on a deep baking tray, add boiling water to half way up the sides of the ramekins, and bake in the oven for 30 minutes on 180/gas 4.
BTW 2: Nigella advocates vodka rather than brandy to flame a pudding – apparently the flame is better and lasts longer. Just mind your eyebrows.
