28 December 2006

Behold the wondrous pudding

Back to our irregularly scheduled programming...

I am very happy to report that Mummy screwed up all of her patience and actually waited for Christmas to have the
pudding. No, her fuzzyheadedness did not file the secret-to-me location of the puddings in that murky thing of hers called "short term memory," allowing her to forget where she stashed the puds...

Not that she didn't use every trick in the book to get early access...

"Oh look it's snowing out, let's steam the pudding..."
"Oh look we don't have any sweets for supper, let's steam the pudding..."
"Oh look at how cute the cat is, let's steam the pudding..."
"Oh look, the snow melted away, let's steam the pudding..."
"Oh look Coronation Street is on, let's steam the pudding..."
"Oh look it's Saturday and Coronation Street isn't on, let's steam the pudding..."
and of course the old
"Are you sure it's good, how will you know if we don't try it before Christmas? You don't want to be the one who ruined Christmas because the pudding was rot, do you?

Yes...she tried her level best...but my stubbornness is equal to (or greater than) her eagerness to have pudding. Each time my answer was "No"--except for the last one where my answer was "the puddings are fine and they'll be better if you let them alone." Each time the reply was "You are so mean to me, I'm glad you aren't my mother."

Given all the food for Christmas, we actually steamed the pudding on Sunday, with plans to do a light resteaming-warming for Christmas. She was so excited.

"You need to make a hard sauce for it, " she announced.
"Really? You don't want brandy butter instead?"
"No. Lots of sauce."
"Okay."

Never having made a hard sauce before, I searched my shelves for a recipe--Delia, as ever, had the answer.

"Okay, I have a recipe. It serves four to six."
"Double it."
"Double it? There are only four of us for lunch (Mummy, Daddy, the exbf and me) and four again for supper (Mummy, Daddy, and the two boys from Toronto)--and daddy won't have any."
"Double it. I want lots of sauce for my pudding."*
Making the sauce didn't take long and we wound up with a vat of it...enough for at least 20 (imo), but just enough in hers.
"More brandy."
"You want more brandy?'
"Yes, I like brandy. It will be nicer with the pudding--just a spoon more."

I think I used something like a total of 100ml of brandy (the one with the shadow of Napoleon on it, in case anyone is interested) for an 850ml vat of sauce. There's a reason it's called a hard sauce

We unmolded it and turned it onto a plate--she insisted that we flame it.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my mum has this uncanny ability to set off fire and smoke detectors by just walking near them. She can open the fridge and the detector goes off. She thinks about preheating the oven and the detector goes off. You don't want to know what happens when she actually does start cooking. It's not as if she actually burns things or sets the gas to 800C or anything. It's her weird human trick.

So, knowing that she wanted to flame the pudding--something we've never done--I was rather nervous. With full knowledge of the locations of all three fire extinguishers were in the kitchen, we soused the somewhat boozy, a tad sticky, almost ebony pudding with (you guessed it) brandy.

Daddy lit it. It burned a very pretty blue. It burned for a while before going out, but even with all that time, I was too slow with the camera, so we had to re-souse and re-light. if you look really carefully around the edges of the pudding you'll see it's swathed in blue. That's the colour of a flame fed by alcohol.

We dished the pudding and poured on the sauce. It was lovely and moist. And umm...boozy.

The pudding's all gone now...but the sauce isn't. I'm not sure what I'll do with it...Mummy has an idea.

"We should make another pudding..."

* Please note the possessive used: "my."

cheers!
jasmine

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad she was able to "wait" for the pudding :) I didn't realize you had to flame it before eating and I wouldn't know what to do with all that sauce.

Happy Holidays!

Anonymous said...

this brought back memories of the time my mom made this when i was a kid. she did the whole 'flamage' thing for me and my sisters, and we thought it was seriously facsinating!

Anonymous said...

It sounds to me like that sounds is calling out to be poured over ice cream... or eaten with a spoon...

Anonymous said...

Gosh Jasmine, I seriously love you mum. I love folks who know how to have fun! She's wonderful and you seem true to form!! Lovely pudding!

Anonymous said...

lol jasmine, i would have paid money to be there to watch that whole scene. your mother is too funny.

Anonymous said...

The hard sauce has always been my favorite part of the pudding!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you and your mom had a good time with the Christmas pudding

You gotta love a desert you can set aflame.

jasmine said...

Hello all

Lovely puddingly goodness for all :)

Kat - you don't have to flame it, but it makes for great dramatic effect :)

Cinderelly - Welcome! As this is the first flamed pud we've had, it was quite the sight. We'll see if we continue with it.

Brilynn - I think Mum wound up drinking some. She fed some to Beanie...he got tipsy and started running around and tried to beat up Hagia--What a mean drunk he is!

Tanna & BB - She is very cute. She'll be leaving in a week for six months...it will be very quiet without her...mind you...the phone calls will start...

Sara - It's amazing how many people don't know what hard sauce is...oh well...more for us!

BP - She was very cute about it all...very excited...besides...fire is good ;)

j