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ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS PUDDING

I don’t deny it: there is something unattractively boastful about calling one’s own recipe “ultimate”. But having soaked my dried fruit for this pudding in Pedro Ximénez – the sweet, dark, sticky sherry that has a hint of liquorice, fig and treacle about it – I know there is no turning back. It’s not even as if it’s an extravagance: the rum or brandy I’ve used up till now are more expensive and do the trick less well. This is sensational. I love the same fruits, too, steeped in the magic liqueur, but this here is the Queen of Christmas puddings. It has to be tried, and clamours to be savoured.I know that many of you, tradition be damned, are resistant to Christmas pudding, and I do understand why. But you must try this. For until you do, you probably think all that dried fruit is, well, dry, and the pudding heavy. Yet this is far from the case: the fruit is moist and sticky, and the pudding mystifyingly, meltingly light. A note on Christmas pudding generally, though I admit it’s not my first foray into this; traditions, even if not followed to the letter, can’t be wholly dispensed with just because they have lost their novelty – that is precisely their point. So, faithful readers, please forgive my ageing-lecturer style repetitiveness here. Traditionally, you should have all the family in the kitchen as you make your pudding, each one giving a stir in turn, the youngest first and going upwards in age. To honour the three kings, you are meant to stir from east to west, but I don’t have a compass and am not good enough at geography to work that one out. Stir-up Sunday, when we are supposed to make our puddings, falls near the end of November, on the Sunday before Advent, and is – as I’ve told some of you before – a religious rather than a culinary injunction, as in “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”. But personally I have never managed to make my puddings quite so efficiently in advance.Some cooks like to use only 13 ingredients, symbolizing Jesus and his apostles, but a little bit of superstition enters in as well, since charms were traditionally included in the mix: a thimble, to suggest that whoever found it in their portion would stay a spinster, a coin to indicate riches, a ring to signify a wedding on the horizon, and so on. These days you’d be hard put to find such charms, though I own some pretty ancient ones. Clearly, we’re just interested in money, as now it’s coins that most of us bury in the pudding. (And some advice here: do clean them first; the best, if alarming way, is to soak them overnight in sugary cola. The Health & Safety recommendation is to wrap the coins in greaseproof paper even if they have been cleaned, but I unapologetically disobey. You must make up your own mind.)There is still more than a whiff of the pagan about the pud: not only is each person meant to make a wish – superstition superseding faith – as they stir the mixture in advance; but the flaming of the pudding, as you serve it, is a nod to the pagan winter solstice celebration, in which fire and light and warmth are brought into our chill darkness. And to reiterate the little English history lesson I gave in Feast, actually, the Christmas pudding was once seen as a religious affront. Oliver Cromwell banned it as a “lewd custom”, dismissing the rich pudding as “unfit for God fearing people”, and the Quakers magnificently condemned it as “the invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon”. I used to fear that the Quakers made Christmas pudding sound more exciting than it is, so I’ve long done my bit to come up with a pudding that the scarlet whore of Babylon would be truly proud of. I don’t recant any earlier recipes, but this one, definitively, is it.

Recipe posted by Nigella

Ingredients

  • Nigella Recipe
  • 150g currants
  • 150g sultanas
  • 150g prunes, scissored into pieces
  • 175ml Pedro Ximénez sherry
  • 100g plain flour
  • 125g breadcrumbs
  • 150g suet
  • 150g dark muscovado sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon baking powdergrated zest of 1 lemon
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 medium cooking apple, peeled and grated
  • 2 x 15ml tablespoons honey
  • sprig of holly to decorate
  • 125ml vodka to flame
  • 1 x 1.7 litre/3 pint heatproof plastic puddingbasin with lid

Method

Serves: 8-10
  1.  Although I stipulate a capacious 1.7 litre/3 pint basin, and cannot extol the utter gloriousness of this pud too much, I know that you’re unlikely to getthrough most of it, even half of it, at one sitting. But I like the grand, prideinstillingsize of this, plus it’s wonderful on following days, microwaved in portionsafter or between meals, with leftover Eggnog Cream, or fried in butter and eaten with vanilla ice cream for completely off-the-chart, midnight-munchyfeasts. But it wouldn’t be out of the question – and it would certainly be in the spirit of the season – to make up the entire quantity of mixture, and share between smaller basins – a 2 pint one for you, a 1 pint one to give away. Threehours’ steaming both first and second time around should do it; just keep theone pudding for yourself, and give the other to a friend, after it’s had its firststeaming, and is cool, with the steaming instructions for Christmas Day.
  2. Put the currants, sultanas and scissored prunes into a bowl with the PedroXiménez, swill the bowl a bit, then cover with clingfilm and leave to steep overnight or for up to 1 week.
  3. When the fruits have had their steeping time, put a large pan of water on toboil, or heat some water in a conventional steamer, and butter your heatproofplastic pudding basin (or basins), remembering to grease the lid, too.
  4. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the remaining pudding ingredients, either in the traditional manner or just any old how; your chosen method of stirring, and who does it, probably won’t affect the outcome of your wishes or your Christmas.
  5. Add the steeped fruits, scraping in every last drop of liquor with a rubber spatula, and mix to combine thoroughly, then fold in cola-cleaned coins or heirloom charms. If you are at all frightened about choking-induced fatalities at the table, do leave out the hardware.
  6. Scrape and press the mixture into the prepared pudding basin, squish it down and put on the lid. Then wrap with a layer of foil (probably not necessary, but I do it as I once had a lid-popping and water-entering experience when steaming a pudding) so that the basin is watertight, then either put the basin in the pan of boiling water (to come halfway up the basin) or in the top of a lidded steamer (this size of basin happens to fit perfectly in the top of my all-purpose pot) and steam for 5 hours, checking every now and again that the water hasn’t bubbled away.
  7. When it’s had its 5 hours, remove gingerly (you don’t want to burn yourself) and, when manageable, unwrap the foil, and put the pudding in its basin somewhere out of the way in the kitchen or, if you’re lucky enough, a larder, until Christmas Day.
  8. On the big day, rewrap the pudding (still in its basin) in foil and steam again, this time for 3 hours. Eight hours combined cooking time might seem a faff, but it’s not as if you need to do anything to it in that time.
  9. To serve, remove from the pan or steamer, take off the lid, put a plate on top, turn it upside down and give the plastic basin a little squeeze to help unmould the pudding. Then remove the basin – and voilà, the Massively Matriarchal Mono Mammary is revealed. (Did I forget to mention the Freudian lure of the pudding beyond its pagan and Christian heritage?)
  10. Put the sprig of holly on top of the dark, mutely gleaming pudding, then heat the vodka in a small pan (I use my diddy copper butter-melting pan) and the minute it’s hot, but before it boils – you don’t want the alcohol to burn off before you attempt to flambé it – turn off the heat, strike a match, stand back and light the pan of vodka, then pour the flaming vodka over the pudding and take it as fast as you safely can to your guests. If it feels less dangerous to you (I am a liability and you might well be wiser not to follow my devil-may-care instructions), pour the hot vodka over the pudding and then light the pudding. In either case, don’t worry if the holly catches alight; I have never known it to be anything but singed.
  11. Serve with the Eggnog Cream, which you can easily make - it's the work of undemanding moments - while the pudding's steaming.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the Christmas pudding up to 6 weeks ahead. Keep in a cool, dark place, then proceed as recipe on Christmas Day.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make and freeze the Christmas pudding for up to 1 year ahead. Thaw overnight at room temperature and proceed as recipe on Christmas Day.

 

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Comments

  • I made this for the first time last Christmas and it was absolutely delicious. I'm planning on making it today as it is Stir Up Sunday but I'm wondering how it will work if I use shortening instead of suet. We've drastically cut down our meat consumption and are only buying meat from ethical sources (no factory farms). That said I can't find suet so I'll be using Earth Balancing shortening. If anyone has tried it I'd love to hear the results ~ I'm a bit nervous to mess with perfection.

    Posted by Sunflowerrae on 27th Nov 2011 at 19.30

  • A tip for no-hassle cooking for this, which I have done for the last three years. Stick the mixture in the pudding bowl, covered up, into the slow cooker on Christmas Eve morning, fill with water to just under the top of the pudding bowl and turn on low. Perfect result. I also up the sugar by 50g as I found it wasn't sweet enough for my liking, oh and lobbed a bit more fruit to be seeped including a few chopped up figs. I will never buy a shop Christmas pudding again!

    Posted by Rammy Stuey on 1st Jan 2012 at 10.48

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