Christmas Pudding

And all the ways in which a pressure cooker will help you make it....

According to my step daughter, it is way too early to be thinking about Christmas - much eye rolling recently when Shariq and I decided we needed cheering up with our favourite Christmas Hallmark Movie Bingo game*, a tradition in the Phipps/Ali household. She, of course, doesn’t have to think about the food prep that goes into Christmas and starts way before December (and neither is she a food writer who often works on Christmas features throughout the summer, but that is another story). I imagine most households with a homemade bent will be well into their Christmas food planning by now. Christmas cakes made and fed regularly throughout November and December, mincemeat and perhaps even some chutneys and pickles as well, made and put somewhere cool to mature and Christmas Puddings - well, the tradition is that they should be made on Stir Up Sunday, which falls on this weekend.

The pressure cooker is a workhorse in the kitchen and such a boon when it comes to Christmas prep. I shall be writing more about all the ways it can help you on the day itself in December, as well as be giving you a few side dishes you can pressure cook in advance. But today we are focussing on the pudding.

The first time I was ever shown how to use a pressure cooker it was to steam Christmas puddings. I was on a kind of hiatus/life re-evaluation

in Dominica and we had quite a production line of them going. This was overseen by Josie, by then in her 90s (the mother of the hotel owner I worked with. Days with her were very civilised and included a routine of afternoon tea at 3 o’clock and matches of canasta). She would insist on rounding up all the hotel staff so they could all have a stir for luck. Hers was a vintage sort of pressure cooker which generated a constant hiss of steam as it cooked, but even so, still useful in this setting (I wish I had known quite how useful) for puddings and stock - despite our kitchen basically being open at the sides, and cleverly angled to make the most of the cooling trade winds, it could still get hot, and having the pressure cookers to keep the steaming time to a minimum really helped.

This all seems like a very long time ago! I am not as organised as Josie was and have sometimes, shockingly, made a Christmas pudding as late as Christmas Eve. And it has still been good. And unless I have kept one from the previous year, I will always make one, even if it is at the 11th hour. My son in particular loves the drama of the setting alight and the will o’ the wisp qualities of the dancing blue flame and would feel deprived without it.

I know quite a few people who get ahead and make their puddings in the first weeks November, if not earlier, but if you are sticking with tradition and making them this weekend, then there are a couple of things which need attention before we get on to Christmas pudding proper. Some people will have been organised enough to put their fruit on to soak in advance. If you haven’t, it isn’t too late to start now – overnight can be enough. But my preferred method is to pressure soak which results in very plump, juicy fruit which in turn gives you a lighter texture to your pudding. I always soak my fruit this way, even if I have time to do it conventionally - I just prefer the results I get. You can do this with your dried fruit for your Christmas cakes too. Normally, I use equal amounts of fruit to liquid to get them really plump (the Christmas pudding takes less and is the exception) and I mess around with combinations**.

The other thing that needs attention is the candied citrus peel. I am really fussy about this. A refrain from my childhood was a plea to my mother to leave it out, because I could not stand the taste of the mixed peel she bought either in little plastic pots – or even worse, in bags with dried fruit. I used to pick it out of everything when I was a child and still don’t like it now. But if you buy whole pieces of citrus peel and chop it up yourself, it tastes completely different, revelatory. And if you make it yourself….most years I make mandarin or yuzu candied peel. And they make it into my mincemeat, fruit cakes, Christmas puddings, stollen, or are chopped into sugar cookies….so many good things to do with them. And pressure cooking can help you make them too.

I know it isn’t always easy getting hold of unchopped citrus peel, but if you can, it is totally worth it. It is possible to get separate pieces of orange, lemon and citron. And I buy candied yuzu peel from The Wasabi Company or The Japanese Centre. If you can’t (and also have an aversion to the ready chopped stuff, I am assuming that people do when often they don’t!), here is my recipe, which will work with any kind of citrus peel and you can just about get it done before Sunday. It is adapted from my Citrus book which has the conventional method. The pressure cooker is useful as it speeds up the endless and repetitive boiling stages that are needed to debitter the peel.

If you want to make more than one kind of citrus peel, I would be careful about cooking them together as you don’t want the flavours to bleed into one another. But I think one kind is enough for a Christmas pudding – you can always add zest of another sort of citrus for variety.

Candied Citrus Peel

2 oranges OR 4 lemons or 8 mandarins/clementines/limes

300g granulated sugar

Cut the fruit into quarters, vertically, and peel away the skin away from the flesh. If the pith on the skin is particularly thick, trim it down a little. Put the peel in a bowl and cover with cold water. Leave to soak for an hour, then drain. Put into your pressure cooker and cover with cold water. Close the lid, bring up to high pressure and immediately remove from the heat. Fast release. Repeat this process twice more, using cold water each time, for lemons, sour (Seville) oranges, limes and mandarins, three times for sweet oranges and four times for grapefruit. This is all about making sure the peel isn’t too bitter.

Put the sugar in a saucepan with 300ml water and stir on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Add the peel, then simmer gently until the peel is completely translucent and the syrup has reduced. You can test with a thermometer if you like – it should be 105-6ºC. Remove the peel from the syrup and lay out on cooling racks. Either put in a very low oven (as low as it will go) with the door slightly ajar, and leave to dry out for an hour so, or leave out over night.

To make orangettes (or any citrus equivalent), you can cut into strips, coat in sugar or half dip in melted chocolate. These make excellent Christmas presents and are delicious to snack on over the holiday period (or, really, at any time). Or leave whole, ready to be used in all your Christmas baking. They will keep in an air tight container indefinitely.

candied yuzu peel, pre drying

And now on to the Christmas Pudding!

Christmas pudding making is a good family undertaking, especially if you are making a lot. As happy as I am pottering about on my own in the kitchen, with just an audio book for company (or a Podcast to shout at), I do like setting Adam to work, especially when it comes to chopping up the candied citrus peel. This kind of prep is companionable work and always puts me in mind of My Naughty Little Sister helping her grandmother with it on Bonfire Night to take their minds off the fireworks. It was more of an undertaking then, written back in the days when suet had to be chopped and raisins had to be deseeded and destalked if you wanted to avoid a crunch to your pudding.

You can of course use any favourite recipe for your puddings, it is the pressure cooking timings which are important. You might not be surprised to know that mine is never the same twice. For many years, I followed Nigella Lawson’s recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess (still my baking bible, almost 25 years on) so if I happen to have any maron glacé, I will crumble them in. Use whatever dried fruit you like. This year, I have raisins, sultanas, glacé cherries, dried blueberries and prunes. Along with home made candied mandarin peel and a couple of maron glacé which have sat in the chocolate tin (an old panettone tin just the right height for 100g bars of chocolate which attracts all kinds of sweet odds and ends) since last December.

It is thanks to Nigella I know that vodka burns better and longer than other spirits and it is true – it seems to go on for ages.

This recipe is enough to fill 2 x 750ml basins, 1 x large 1.5l basins or 8-10 mini basins, but it will halve or double easily as I have used an even number of eggs. You need at least a 6l pressure cooker for the largest size.

Ingredients:

500g dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants, chopped prunes, pears, dried blueberries, glace cherries etc)

75g candied peel, finely chopped

175ml rum or brandy

125g self raising flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 allspice

1/4 tsp each ground cloves, ground mace, ground cardamom

150g fresh breadcrumbs

175g shredded suet (I always use beef, not the vegan one as that is always palm oil)

175g dark muscavado sugar

4 eggs

150g grated quince or apple

zest of 1 orange or 2 of mandarin

To serve:

50ml vodka

First, either soak your dried fruit in the rum over night or quick soak in the pressure cooker. To do this, put the fruit in your pressure cooker and cover with 150ml of the brandy or rum. Close the lid, bring up to high pressure and immediately remove from the heat. Leave to drop pressure naturally. When you open the lid you should find all the liquid has been absorbed by the fruit, which will have been transformed from dry and wrinkled to smoother and plump (goals!). Add the remaining alcohol and set aside.  

Mix all the remaining ingredients together with a generous pinch of salt, then add the fruit. If following tradition, corral all your family members and get them to take turns stirring and making a wish. I do this every year and use my largest Mason Cash mixing bowl which I think gives it a sense of occasion. Pile into pudding basins, making sure you have pushed the mixture down well to reduce the risk of air pockets.

Bonfire Night, 2019

Fold a pleat into foil or baking parchment and secure around the top of the basin - you can tie with string, making a handle at the same time, or just fix into place with an elastic band. Put the pudding basin in the centre of a foil sling**. Lift into the pressure cooker. You can either place the pudding on a trivet or onto a folded up piece of cloth - it is not necessary for the basin to be suspended above the water. Add around 5cm water to the base of the cooker.

Bring up to the boil and steam for 15 minutes, then fix the lid in place. Bring up to high pressure. For mini puddings, steam for 40 minutes, for a medium pudding (750ml-1l), steam for between 1.5-2 hours, depending how dark you like it, and for a large pudding (1.5l), steam for 3 hours. These are the minimum timings which will give you a pudding of a rich brown texture. After this, the longer you steam, the darker it will get - I know for some people Christmas pudding has to be as dark as you can get it. Allow to drop pressure naturally, cool and leave somewhere cool and dark until you are ready to eat it.

To reheat on Christmas day, the small puddings will just need 10 minutes at high pressure, the medium and large will need 30 minutes to reheat through and any longer will impact again on the colour/flavour.

To serve traditionally, take a sprig of holly and wrap the base of the stem in foil before sticking it in the top of the pudding. Heat the vodka in a small saucepan, then set it alight and pour over the pudding. It should flame for a good while.

A final note - inconceivably, not everyone loves Christmas pudding. If this is you or your family or you need to serve an alternative, you could do worse than have a read Sue Quinn’s latest post:

A joyful chocolate alternative to Christmas Pudding

*this is very simple. Put on the film and yell bingo when any Christmas film cliche occurs. A jaunty Christmas tune with a montage of New York Christmassy scenes, even though the film has nothing to do with New York? Bingo! City girl reluctantly going home to save the family business? Bingo! Someone wearing their scarf tucked under the lapels of their coat instead of wrapped round their neck? Bingo! The female lead offering the male lead endless cups of hot chocolate (winsome sideways look with a coy “there’s a hot chocolate in it for you”) and him reacting as though it is the biggest treat in the world (we all know he wants something else)? Bingo! The ex from the city turning up having apparently learned the error of his ways, but not really and they are always too stupid to keep up the act? Bingo! A montage of truly horrific cookie decorating? Bingo! The fact that everyone thinks these sugar cookie monstrosities, always more icing than biscuit, are the most delicious thing they have ever eaten? Bingo! Diversity box ticked by the best friend/mayor/boss being black but never (or rarely, but then it isn’t Hallmark) the lead? Bingo! I could do this all day.

(Actually, there is a very sweet non Hallmark UK film called This is Christmas which does a very good job of missing most of these cliches (there is a dodgy boyfriend) which we watched the other day and I can recommend. It has Sarah Niles in it, and there can never be too much Sarah Niles on our TV screens. My friend Thane Prince, who is also already watching Christmas films, told me about it.)

**Try a dried cranberries and oloroso combo which I have been banging on about for years because they really are spectacular and very versatile – I put them in a citrus bundt cake, as well as in a Christmassy side dish of brussels sprouts and bacon. And in a winter panzanella. Other combinations are available - raisins in marsala is another good one, so is apricots with white wine and saffron. Or use tea, or citrus juice – cranberries or blueberries with orange or mandarin, with the zest as well as the juice, are wonderful.

***a foil sling is a long piece of foil, folded lengthways to create a sling which you can use for taking things in and out of the pressure cooker – useful if room is tight and you can’t get purchase on the sides of a bowl or cake tin when you are wearing ovengloves. Simply lower in, fold the ends over and rest on top of whatever you are cooking, and unfold to remove. It makes life much easier. You can of course make one out of fabric if you prefer.