Daring Bakers: Suet Pudding
This is my first Daring Kitchen ‘challenge’ after reading about them in countless other blogs. The idea is that each month a member posts a recipe challenge (there are ‘cooking’ and ‘baking’ challenges) and everybody has a go and shares their successes and failures. It appealed to me as a way to try new ideas and have some fun cooking! I would recommend anybody to get stuck in and have a go. Full details and FAQ are in this link.
The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: Suet. Being an Englishman this was not as alien a concept as it may have been to some of the other cooks taking on this challenge as I make 2 or 3 Christmas puddings every year and have done several other sweet suet puddings. Suet has a comforting quality that reminds me of school dinner puddings and my mums stew and dumplings on a cold winters night.
However I have never made a vegetarian savoury suet pudding so this became my challenge. The weather has begun to warm up here (spring has finally arrived!) so I wanted to make a lighter dish than a traditional winter meat pudding (the classic filling is steak and kidney). I browsed through my cookbooks and found a vegetarian suet pudding dish by Gary Rhodes. It would make an ideal vegetarian main course or a great rich side dish to roast beef.
Suet (shredded rendered beef fat) is not the most appealing ingredient (it polarised opinions with those bakers who had not used it before) but it is essential in the pastry of traditional English steamed puddings (savoury and sweet). These misgivings are misplaced if you are using the boxed stuff, its has the appearance of coarsely grated dessicated coconut (fresh suet is another matter and is for the more adventurous!).
Suet pastry is softer and rich in contrast to the crispness of shortcrust. A pudding bowl (any heat proof bowl will do mine was a small Pyrex mixing bowl… the ones you get supermarket Christmas puddings in are ideal …keep them!) is lined with the suet crust pastry, the meat added and a lid of suet crust tightly seals the meat. The pudding is then steamed before serving in the bowl on the table.
Layered Mushroom and Onion Suet Pudding with “Truffle” Sauce
150 gm vegetarian suet
300 gm self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
200 ml cold water
4-6 medium onions
12 large flat mushrooms
butter
1 large shallot or 2 smaller ones
few sprigs of lemon thyme
300 ml aromatic white wine (Gewürztraminer is ideal)
300 ml Noilly Prat vermouth
Creme fraiche to taste
Making a suet crust pastry was absurdly easy. Mix the flour with an extra teaspoon of baking powder and sieve into bowl. Mix in the shredded suet and season with salt and pepper (its the same process for a sweet suet crust just leave out the seasoning). Add water to form a stiff dough and once all the material is combined into a ball wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest (I left mine overnight at this stage).
Whilst the pastry is resting prepare the mushroom and onion filling. Slice the onions thinly (I used a mandolin…essential timesaving tool) and fry in butter over a medium heat until well caramelised (its better to do this is a couple of batches, seasoning as you go). Trim the stalks from the mushrooms (reserve them for later). Sear the mushrooms in a hot pan with a drop of olive oil in batches of 2 or 3 (you want to get a rich brown colour on them). Set the onions and mushrooms aside to cool.
Generously butter a 2 pint pudding bowl (tip: if you are making a sweet pudding you can get a lovely caramelised finish if you sprinkle soft brown sugar over the buttered surface). Roll the pastry out to a 0.5-1cm thickness and cut a 1/3 segment out, this will be your lid so cut a circle out of this segment using the rim of your pudding bowl. Form a rough cone using the remaining 2/3 of your pastry by bringing the cut edges together with a slight overlap and use this ‘cone’ to line the pudding bowl. Ensure there are no gaps in the lining and trim the excess pastry leaving about 1 cm overlapping the rim.
Drain and reserve any liquid from the mushrooms. Place a layer of the caramelised onions in the bottom of the pudding bowl followed by a few lemon thyme leaves and then a mushroom (gills facing up). Season with salt and pepper. Repeat the layers of onions, thyme and mushrooms until all the filling is used up (as you get towards the top of the bowl you may have to use 2 or 3 mushrooms to form the layer) seasoning each layer lightly. Once all the filling is added top with the suet pastry lid. Overlap and pinch the lining edges over the lid to seal the pudding.
Butter, flour and season a piece of kitchen foil large enough to cover the bowl. Make a pleat in the centre of the foil sheet. Cover the pudding bowl with the foil and place the pudding into a steamer with the bowl resting on a trivet or rack.
If you have a pressure cooker this works even better. I bought a pressure cooker a couple of years ago and find it a brilliantly useful piece of equipment. Not only is it ideal for steaming puddings but it can make the most glorious stocks with only half an hour of cooking ! Steam the pudding for about 2 hours (or 1 hour in a pressure cooker).
Whilst the pudding is steaming prepare the sauce by finely chopping the shallot and remaining mushrooms (including the reserved stalk trimmings). Sweat the shallots in a knob of butter until soft but not coloured and add mushrooms, a few sprigs of lemon thyme and the juice of half a lemon and cook until the mushrooms have softened. Add the white wine, vermouth and reserved mushroom juices. Turn up the heat and reduce by half. Once reduced, turn down the heat to a low simmer add the cream, taste and season. Cook the sauce for a few minutes more then strain through a fine sieve making sure to squeeze out all the juices. Return the sauce to the pan and keep warm.
Once the pudding has steamed leave the pudding to rest for about 10 minutes before removing the foil top and turning out onto a plate.
Cut the pudding into portions sized wedge and serve with the sauce. Some lightly cooked greens would be a good accompaniment but we just had seconds …and then thirds.
I have to admit the final dish tasted much better than it looked (apologies for the rubbish photo but we had friend for dinner and had no time for faffing with the camera). The filling was rich and surprisingly ‘meaty’ and the mushrooms packed a deep, savoury umami punch. The pastry was like a big warm hug: soft and comforting in a way that only suet crust is and had a pleasing slight crispness that I wasn’t expecting.
One last tip… there will be melted suet in the cooking water. Once it cools it will form a rather unpleasant hard, fatty scum so if you are not putting the pan in the dishwasher it it worth giving your pan (and the pudding bowl) a good rinse with hot soapy water before it cools… a job for the ‘sous chef’ in your life?
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In: baking, daring kitchen, recipes, suppers, vegetarian
on April 27, 2010 at 12:41 am
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Your crust looks flakey and delectible! I have never used a pressure cooker, but your results have me quite interested! If only my husband liked mushrooms I would make this! What a great vegetarian recipe! Thank you for sharing it!
on April 27, 2010 at 1:50 pm
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Ruth, I think the extra heat of the pressure cooker (abnout 120 degrees i think) helps crisp up the crust a bit. I would ususally use the pressure cooker to speed up cooking the christmas puddings i make for family every year (it will cut cooking time by at least half). My wife likes it because it keeps the steam in preventing me from turning the kitchen into a sauna!
A pressure cooker also makes the most pure savoury stocks you have ever tasted (Heston Blumenthal makes all his stocks using one) I can knock out chicken stock in from scratch in 30 minutes using mine.
How can you husband not like mushrooms? He needs re-education!
on April 27, 2010 at 2:20 am
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Very detailed! Well done! Looks really good!
on April 27, 2010 at 3:19 am
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Way to go challenging yourself to make a different kind of pudding than you are used to! It looks pretty good, and I am sure that it tasted fantastic. Great job on your challenge, and welcome to the group!
on April 27, 2010 at 4:15 am
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Your pudding sounds delicious – love the vegetarian take on things.
on April 27, 2010 at 2:00 pm
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Gaye,
Vegetarian is not usually my style but the pudding was well received!
on April 27, 2010 at 6:58 am
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Hello and welcome to the Daring Kitchen and congratulations on your 1st challenge. And it seems like you enjoyed this challenge a lot. Lovely photos love that one of the browned pudding brilliant interpretation of the challenge. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.
on April 27, 2010 at 1:59 pm
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Audax… you really are a domestic godess!
I’m not sure its quite fair to judge me on this effort as this challenge really played to my strengths… when you see my attempts at cake decorating you may chage your minds!
I assumed everyone would do this challenge once…how many puddings did you make! 10…20!?!
Yours in awe!
Marv
on April 27, 2010 at 9:18 am
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great job..the flaky crust looks so tempting!
on April 27, 2010 at 1:01 pm
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Congratulations on your first challenge! I had some leftover batter from my cranberry & orange pudding, so I thought I’d make pudding muffins, but when they were cooled, they had that unpleasant hard, fatty scum on them – it tasted really odd. The steamed pudding (eaten warm) was much better.
on April 27, 2010 at 1:40 pm
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Andrea, Yes i agree, suet pastry isn’t for eating cold (not nice). However I love leftover Christmas pudding. My favourite post festive treat is slices of cold Christmas pudding fried in butter until hot and crispy served with vanilla ice cream…drool!
on April 27, 2010 at 2:15 pm
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congratulations you did amazing. it looks and sounds delicious.
on April 27, 2010 at 4:27 pm
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I wish I’d thought to use the pressure cooker — next time. Your pudding looks great! Congratulations on completing your first challenge, and welcome to the Daring Bakers!
on April 29, 2010 at 12:01 pm
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Thanks very much… Loved your ginger and persimmon pudding.
I’ll hopefully get time to make some bread for submission to yeastspotting this weekend!