Getting ahead for Christmas
I am making an early start on the Christmas preparations while I still feel well and energetic. (I don’t know what might round the corner). Any day now, I will be putting the lights on my little tree on the pavement.
“Do you like all this domestic stuff?”, Harvey asks. Well, yes, I do. Now that I have plenty of time for shopping, browsing the internet and pottering about in the kitchen, for once I am enjoying the run up to Christmas.
It’s time to look out my CD of Messiah, ready to sing along, all the parts, as I get stuck into the big Christmas clean-up.
Seasonal aromas
This week is all about making preserves and puddings – stuff that needs time to mature. My kitchen is full of the scents and aromas of Christmas, so evocative of times past.
Yesterday it was Asian spices, onions, vinegar and freshly chopped fruit and veg, for chutney and piccalilli.
Today it is oranges, lemons, nutmeg and brandy as I mix the Christmas pudding. Gwil and Alun will come round later to stir the pudding and make a wish. Tomorrow the kitchen will be full of steam, with my big saucepans bubbling gently on the hob for several hours.
Aunty Polly’s Christmas Pudding
This is the Andrews family (my Ma’s) recipe. I can vividly remember my Granny coming to our house in Quinton to make puddings for all the family, in a huge mixing bowl, and helping her to stir the mixture and making a wish. In time, the recipe was handed on to my Ma, and for the last twenty-five years or so, it has been my task. (Can it really be that long?)
This year the task is bitter-sweet as this might be the last time I make it. The next generation (brilliant cooks) are not partial to steamed puds, and I am not sure who will take it on. So I am handing the recipe on to you, gentle reader, in the hope that you might perhaps help to keep alive the memory of Aunty Polly’s pudding.
“Have you ever thought of just going to Waitrose and buying one?”, asks Stephen. No way! Aunty Polly’s has a story, tradition and memories, mixed into the puddings with love over several generations. You can’t buy that from Waitrose.
Aunty Polly’s famous recipe for Christmas Pudding
Ingredients
½ lb white breadcrumbs
½ lb sugar
6oz suet
3oz mixed peel
2 eggs
1 lb mixed fruit
Juice and rind of 1orange and ½ lemon
About ½ Nutmeg – grated
Small wine glass of Brandy
Method
1. Whizz cubes of white bread in the mixer to make fine breadcrumbs. Use zester or grater to make orange and lemon zest, then squeeze them for juice.
2. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Grate the nutmeg and add it to the mixture.
3. Invite everybody to stir the pudding and make a wish. (leave overnight for the all the flavours to infuse).
4. Grease one large and two small basins. Pack the pudding mixture tightly – about three quarters way up the bowl.
5. Cover with greaseproof paper and foil and secure with string. (leave room for the puddings to rise!) Boil or steam for 6 hours.
6. On Christmas Day, the pudding will need gentle steaming for another couple of hours.
For we all like figgy pudding We all like figgy pudding We all like figgy pudding So bring some out here
And we won’t go until we’ve got some We won’t go until we’ve got some We won’t go until we’ve got some So bring some out here
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin, We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year