Stir Up Sunday and a Great British Christmas pudding

Last Sunday, November 23^rd, was Stir Up Sunday. The final Sunday before the Advent commences on the first Sunday of December. Stir Up Sunday is traditionally the day to make and steam your Christmas Puddings. The Book of Common prayer of Church of England has a prayer allotted to this day:

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen".

I must admit that this is a quaint tradition I have only just heard about via ABC 702 Sydney and Christmas is a time of year where tradition and ages old customs bind many. Do I comply with Stir Up Sunday? No I do not. Sorry to disappoint, folks J (plus I found the Prayer on Wikipedia).

When making your own Christmas puddings you need to be mindful of the maturing period to allow flavour and texture to develop. The maturing period is when the sugars in the fruit and the fat, spices and alcohol in the pudding ripen to add depth of flavour and colour. In a warm climate such as Sydney, the Stir Up Sunday date provides an adequate five to six week period to mature your pudding. In colder Northern Hemisphere climates, the maturing period can be up to three months.

When maturing your pudding, room temperature is ideal. In Sydney, I remove the pudding from its damp steaming muslin and leave it on a rack for a day to dry prior to wrapping in fresh muslin and hanging in an internal room which is well ventilated but without direct sunlight to prevent temperature fluctuations. If you get some mould, it is usually yeast growth, is harmless and can be trimmed prior to reheating. Don’t wrap a pudding in plastic cling wrap as it needs to breath and don’t wrap it in foil as the acid in the dried fruit will dissolve the foil leaving a metallic tasting taint. Don’t refrigerate as this defeats the purpose by stalling the maturing process.

My Christmas Pudding recipe is a lighter version of a recipe from Farmhouse Cookery, a Readers Digest book on Great British cookery that I have had for Donkeys years. I have replaced fluoro Glace Cherries fruits, and a percentage of dried grapes with apricots, cranberries, figs and dates. Tinker to add your preferred fruits too. Mixed spice is easily prepared in a grinder, I use a recipe from Christine Mansfield’s Spice book. Its aromatic flavour is superior to a shop bought mixed spice because the oils are still active and have not staled. This recipe uses 225g suet, as a vegetarian option substitute it for 150g coarsely grated butter.

A Great British Christmas Pudding ( makes 3 X 700g puddings)

Day One: 225g currants, 300g sultanas, 50g dried cranberries, diced 100g dried apricots, 200g dried figs, 200g dates, 1 apple and carrot (coarsely grated), finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange. Mix altogether in a bowl with approx 300ml dark stout/ Guinness ( approx ½ pint). Cover and leave this to soak overnight.

Day Two: Line three basins with damp muslin, large enough to fold over the top and cover the puddings, allowing them room to expand. (Wash under the tap, the muslin to remove any loose fibres).

225g Self raising flour, 225g Suet, 225g fresh white breadcrumbs, 225g soft dark brown sugar, 1 level teaspoon salt, 4 level teaspoons mixed spice. Stir these dry ingredients together.

Beat together 6 eggs. Combine with the fruit and dry ingredients, stirring till thoroughly mixed. Your mix should be a soft dropping consistency. Add extra stout if needed. Drink what’s left.

Divide between the three bowls and close the muslin over the top. Wrap the bowls well with glad wrap. Place in a steamer and simmer for seven hours. (You can reduce the time using a pressure cooker but the raising will be hindered by the increased pressure, I have an old Fowlers Vacola urn that holds multiple basins).

Day Three: After steaming remove puddings from steamer and allow them to cool in the basin. Then prepare for maturing as in the introduction.

When serving:  Steam the pudding for a minimum of two hours. A tip for flaming brandy or rum when serving: heat the alcohol in a small pan or ladle before pouring over your hot pudding and ignite with a match.

Bon Appetite! 

Sourdough companion blog

A great blog on sourdough breads, free of bakers yeasts

Sourdough Companion is a community of bakers (of all levels) interested in the art of naturally risen breads - Bread risen with bacteria and wild yeasts!

With recipes, tutorials and discussions, there’s plenty to discover along your bread making journey.

Also recipes for cakes, pastries and biscuits.

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Australian Sustainable Seafood

Here in Sydney if you are a seafood lover, you are lucky to have the Sydney Fish market in Pyrmont. If you are not a Sydneysider, they are well worth a visit. They are easily accessible by the tram (light rail) that runs from Central station and also stops at the Star casino- so you can have lovely fresh fish and a win on the roulette wheel. Can life get any better!

The fish at Sydney fish markets is caught by local fishermen and is also from fishing ports up and down the coast: Jervis bay, Port Macquarie, Batemans Bay, and Eden. Some imported fish from New Zealand is sold as is fish from all around Australia.

In NSW alone we have abundance of fresh fish and seafood available: your oily fish (mackerel, sardines), tasty white fleshed fish (snapper, barramundi, flathead, ling, dory) plus tons of shellfish. Oysters are grown up and down the coast, with the closest oyster stacks found on the gorgeous Hawkesbury River between Sydney and Gosford (one hour from my house and well worth a visit).

Fish and shellfish is healthy for you, although seafood is loaded with Cholesterol. It isn’t expensive. I bought Mackerel for $8.99 Kg and Sardines $6.99 Kg the other week. These flavoursome oily fish are great grilled till black over the flames on the BBQ. Whole Mackerel can be stuffed in the cavity with lemon slices and pieces of torn flat leaved parsley to impart flaovour when it cooks.

At the more expensive end of the scale Snapper and Barramundi are great fish baked whole on the bone and presented whole in the centre of the table. When serving whole fish you just have to be adept at filleting it at the table.

Sustainability

Snapper and Barra are very popular to the point of being over fished and stock being imported from across the ditch (NZ). Support our Aussie fish industry and buy local. The two major supermarket chains sell at lot of imported fish that is sold thawed from frozen.  Most shopping centres have a fishmonger, get to know them and find out the specials (usually cheaper because of abundance). Australia is leading the way with aquaculture. Farmed Salmon and trout has greatly reduced the price marking it an affordable mid week meal not just for special occasions. Overfishing of non farmed fish is of concern because as we empty the oceans of fish, the damage is twofold. One, we mess up the ocean supply chain of food for other animals and two; fish caught is small and doesn’t get the chance to grow to adulthood when they can spawn. If you want to make a more sustainable choice when buying fish, check out the website http://goodfishbadfish.com.au. It has a useful fish converter which tells you how sustainable a fish species is and suggests a more sustainable alternative if your first choice is overfished. It recommends fish suited to various cooking methods so you can experiment with new unfamiliar types.

Storage

Fresh fish and seafood must be fresh (clear eyes, colourful gills, so firm when you hold it vertically it stands erect). It requires a very cold spot in your fridge, if you are worried about this, store it with a couple of frozen Eski blocks to keep it super cold. When storing it, remove it from plastic bags so it doesn’t soak in its own blood and juices. This will ruin text and flavour when eaten. Have the guts removed as these are the first part to go off. White fleshed fish does keep longer than oily fleshed fish. 

Cooking techniques

Where would our fisherman be without the eternal favourite of Fish and chips! Flathead is great battered and fried so too is Ling. Minute whitebait are delicious floured and fried whole. Sardines are a good alternative when butterflied and shallow fried. To do this, gut them ( don’t ask your fishmonger to do this they will laugh at you for these tiny fish, gut straight into a plastic bag that you can scoop up and throw in your bin). Next remove the head and you will now be able to open them flat with their backs on the board. Cut the back bone at the tail end with scissors and you should be able to prise away the backbome from the flesh on one piece. Trim the outer edges to remove any small remaining bones and neaten them for better presentation. Their tail remains and should stand out. These are delicious crumbed with a mixture of polenta, finely grated parmesan and finely chopped flat leave parsley. After shallow frying, serve accompanied by a roasted garlic aioli (I cheat by mashing whole roasted garlic through a good bought Mayo such as Thomy. When roasting garlic, roast it in its husk and to remove snap off one end and squeeze it out like toothpaste).

Whole fished baked in the oven or on the BBQ is great paired with a pesto or Salsa Verde ( take equal parts coriander and flatleaf parsley, grind to a paste in the processor with lemon zest and juice, garlic, red chili and ground white pepper and olive oil to paste a paste. This can be kept as a staple for a couple of weeks in the fridge in a jar covered with oil to stop discolouration from oxidation). Make a two or three shallow slashes through the skin into the flesh. On a piece of oiled foil, place one spoon of Salsa Verde, place your fish. Spoon a little into the cavity add a couple of lemon slices. Top the fish with more Salsa and about a glass of white wine then encase in foil to form a parcel. Bake in a hot oven or on the BBQ for around 45 minutes for a 2-3 kg fish.

Filleting whole fish at the table

When serving a whole fish at the table, you don’t want to lose the initial wow factor by having guests with a mouth full of bones.

When serving a whole fish, think of it as in two parts. Run the tip of your knife along the crest of its back to start separating the top fillet from the backbone and then mark the portion with a downward cut to the backbone before sliding your knife horizontally along the back bone to remove the flesh. Repeat till the top fillet is fully removed from the bone right up to the head. You should now be able to lift the entire back bone out intact cartoon style so you can serve the underside fillet.

A word of advice, fish remnants will stink your bin out within a matter of hours. A better way to handle fish remnants is there’s a few days before garbage collection is to fresh it in a bag and only drop it in the bin on collection day.

Salt- friend or foe?

We season food with salt multiple times when we are cooking a meal but as health conscious people can we do without it? To answer this question, we need to understand the role of salt when cooking.

As a flavouring

Salt asensuates flavour by enhancing foods it is added to during the cooking and serving stages. In a pot of boiled vegetables, to season the sauce of a casserole, salt plays a vital role. Our pallet recognises the multiple components of taste. When these components are balanced we enjoy the flavour of our food. The components of taste are sweet, bitter, sour, salty and unami. Therefore the addition of salt enhances the food that we eat to please our pallets. Does that mean all our food must be highly seasoned? No, processed food is formulated to appease these taste components and if we eat a large component of processed food your pallet will be attuned to a salty diet. Some professional chefs spark mini controversies by refusing to allow salt on their diner’s table because the Chef is the ruler of  their kingdom and they  have decreed that there is sufficient seasoning in a dish when it is served. If you want to reduce the salt quota of your food intact, does this mean you are destined to eat bland food? No all foods have natural flavouring enhancers- tomatoes contain naturally occurring MSG. Foods can be enhanced by roasting/ toasting ( think coffee, nuts), herbs & spices can provide a flaovoursome alternative. Vegetarians beware in Thai cookery seasoning is in the form of fish sauce and palm sugar in curries to balance a dish to our pallet.

The Mallard effect

Salt in the cooking process assists with the browning and crisping of food, again ultimately bringing flavour to a dish. Salt raises the boiling point of water by absorbing available water which is why if you are ever marooned on a desert island you will be desperate for fresh water to prevent dehydration.

If you season meat before grilling or roasting it, the available water evaporates faster causing the surface to brown faster and again give fuller flavour. This doesn’t happen magically you need enough airflow to sustain the browning process which is why if you overload a pan when browning meat for a casserole, the meat will stew in its own juices and be tough instead of crisp and brown. Likewise if roasting meat or vegetables, trays with a low side that allow air flow will result in crisper browner food.

Some people prefer not to season their meat prior to cooking for fear that the salt will draw out moisture leaving a dry piece of meat. The moisture lost is so negligible and is counteracted by allowing meat to rest for the juices to settle for at least 5 minutes if a small piece or longer if a joint of meat.

Liquid extraction

My brilliant old mum is not a good cook by a long shot, but one dish she taught me to make and I still make today is pickled red cabbage. Food preservation is effective when moisture is extracted from food and therefore cannot be used by microbes to make us ill. When pickling vegetables and meats, salt is used to draw out moisture from the vegetables, emptying  the cells of their moisture, which is then replaced by vinegar making pickling an effective way of preserving. A similar technique is used to extract the bitter flavour of large eggplants/ aubergines.

In both these examples, the salt is rinsed away and the food dried before progressing to the next stage of processing, whether pickling in malt vinegar or cooking.

Denaturing of protein

Salt in sweet dishes, who’d have thought! Sydney has been gripped in the salted caramel craze for a couple of years. In baking and desert preparation, salt has a very important role to play. When making meringue or the Aussie Pavlova, you whisk egg whites to aerate the mixture. Egg white is a tight bundle of protein strands that don’t want to be separated and split. They are partying together. To be the albumen party pooper, you add a pinch of salt to assist the whisking stage and achieve better aeration.

This chemical trick can work effectively to extend the coating power of egg wash if you are brushing the tops of pies or pastries or when crumbing food to extend the glue that holds crumb coatings to fish and other pané foods.

Salt has many uses and comes in many guises: table, cooking, sea salt, pink. It enhances flavour and helps us to create much conversation worthy dishes. It deserves to be used and not cast aside as an enemy. If you have been told to reduce your salt intake for health reasons, consider where is it hidden or where can I substitute for a healthier options thus reducing your overall intake but still allowing you to enjoy its flavour.