The Great British Dish
I know that in my last post I was writing about Indian Food, and I know that we run Mediterranean Classes, Tapas Classes and Pasta Making at the cooking school, and I know I make Stollen and foccaccia bread to sell; BUT …. having said all that, I am a great fan of all things British.
I love hot cross buns, sticky toffee pudding, faggots, black pudding, fry ups, sausages and my desert island dish would have to be roast rib of beef with yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy. So when I read last week that many of our native dishes are threatened with extinction because of neglect and being overun by invasive species from abroad I was immediately spurred into action to create a national treasure.
I suppose many people are put off making steak and kidney pudding, or any other steamed pudding, because the idea of something steaming for 4 or 5 hours immediately seems fussy and complicated, but it really is a very simple dish. Suet crust pastry really is the easiest pastry ever to make, there’s no need to cook the meats before they go into the pudding, and apart from checking that your pan isn’t boiling dry the steaming is pretty much a case of putting the pudding in a saucepan and forgetting about it for 4 hours. And the result is so worth waiting for:
Click here for the recipe
Because this pudding had no added liquid I served ot with Boulanger Potatoes - which sounds all foreign again but I’m not sure if we have a name for sliced potatoes baked with stock - any way the juiciness works well with the pud.
The assembled throng loved it and it really was simple, so give it a go and keep the flag flying.