Steamed ginger pudding

I got this from The Guardian and amended the preparation a little. If you are interested in other steamed pudding, try my mam’s steamed apple pudding. I guess you could combine both of these to make a ginger-y, syrup-y apple pudding. I suppose this would work by putting apples in the bottom of your steamer dish and putting this ginger pudding mixture on top. Leave a note in the comments if you try this before I do!

Steamed ginger pudding

180g butter, softened, plus a little extra for greasing

80g stem ginger, thinly sliced, plus 3 tbsp of syrup from the jar (you can get this in the Asian section of your supermarket)
7 tbsp golden syrup or honey, or a mixture of these
180g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
180g golden caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp milk

If your pudding bowl doesn’t fit into any of your pots, you will also need an oven-proof dish that is big enough to hold your pudding bowl, and an industrial amount of tin foil.

Butter a 1.2-litre pudding bowl and line the base with a circle of baking parchment if you’re going to turn out your finished product. My mam never did this, and the thought of doing this has never even dawned on me. I suppose it makes sense, particularly if you’re making it for guests.

Chop your ginger very finely. I thought I had chopped it small enough, into chunks about 3-4mm in size, but in the final pud, they were a bit too chunky.

In a mixing bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and ground ginger. In another bowl, beat the butter, sugar, eggs and milk until smooth. I mixed the chopped ginger and the golden syrup in at this stage. Fold the flour mix into the butter mix until well combined.

Put the kettle on to boil.

Pour the mixture into the pudding bowl and put the lid on or make sure it’s well covered with a layer of greaseproof paper and tin foil, tied with a string.

Pre-cooking.  Make sure you leave enough room in the
dish so that the pudding can expand

If you’re lucky enough to have a large enough pot, put a saucer upside down on the bottom of the pot, put your pudding dish on top and pour the boiling water into the pot. Cover with a lid and simmer for an hour and a half. Make sure that the water doesn’t boil off.

If you don’t have a large enough pot, get your oven-proof dish ready and put the oven on to 190°. You need to create a seal around the pot and the dish to ensure that the pudding steams. Put down enough tin foil to cover the two dishes – you might need to put down two parallel sheets to do this. Put your pudding dish in the oven-proof dish and fill the oven-proof dish with boiling water. Bring the tin foil up around the pot and close it so that none of the steam can escape. I took some photos to give you a better idea. Carefully put it in the oven and cook for an hour and a half.

Wrapping the pudding to steam it.
I still have to put the lid on the dish here. 

And ready to go into the oven

However you cook it, after the 90 minutes, carefully take the pudding bowl out of the pot/dish. There will be a lot of steam, and steam can burn.

Serve your pudding hot, with custard or cream, or both. 

For St Patrick's Day... Coddle

This is a dish that divides people; you either love it or hate it. Thankfully, everyone chez nous loves it, so in honour of St. Patrick’s day today I made it this during the week.

It is a very cheap and satisfying, warming dish. It’s also very simple to make.

You will need:

3-4 sausages per person (I only ever have used the ordinary, plain pork ones, no fancy ‘flavoured’ sausages for this dinner)

one smallish onion per person

A large potato per person

After experimenting with several types of spud, I find the more solid ‘frites’ style potatoes are wrong for this dish. I can't remember the best type, but once I do I'll post it here. I've tried lots of sorts of sausages from various places in Belgium - supermarkets, local butchers etc, but the best I've found are the breakfast sausages from Jack O'Sheas butchers. Husband encourages me to experiment with the ingredients, but no. Coddle is a traditional Dublin dish, from the poorest parts of the city, so none of your fancy garlic or parsley. 

You will need a pot or casserole dish with a lid.

Put the whole sausages into the casserole and cover with water. Over a medium heat, bring them to the boil. While your sausages are cooking, peel and chop the onions, and peel and slice the potatoes to about half a centimetre thick. Once at boiling point, take the sausages off the heat and discard up any foam.

The boiled sausages with a first layer of onions

Sprinkle a layer of the onions onto the sausages, followed by a layer of potatoes. Keep doing this till you use all the onions and potatoes. Add enough water to just cover the last layer of potatoes and finish with a generous layer of salt and pepper.

Put the lid on and pop the pot back onto the heat, turning it right down to low. Cook for about an hour or an hour and a half, until the potatoes are tender. Coddle is a very 'pale' dish - it has little colour - so don't worry if it looks anemic. 

Serve in bowls, with pints of milk (if you can get any decent tasting milk in Belgium!) or pints of Guinness.

A steaming bowl of coddle. And yes, I know what the sausage looks like...

Mammy’s steamed apple pudding

I managed to get my hands on some cooking apples, thanks to the Internet Grocer. Yay! Now to use them.

Every time I go home, I ask mammy to make her steamed apple pudding for me. Ah, bless. it's one of my favourite desserts.  

I also managed to get my hands on a pudding steamer (from Amazon), seeing as I couldn’t find any suitable bowl (plastic, with either a well fitting lid or a good lip that you can use to catch a string around).

So, for comfort, you will need:

100g butter

100g sugar

100g flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

2 eggs

vanilla essence

4 cooking apples

Beat the sugar and butter until white. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Fold in the flour and baking powder until it’s all combined. It should drop easily off the spoon, so if needed, add a little milk.

Steamed apple pudding mixture

Pop the kettle on.

Peel the apples and slice into the bottom of your steaming dish. Top with the cake mixture.

Sliced apples for steamed apple pudding

Now for the science! You have to make sure that your steaming dish is totally sealed. If you have a steamer, this is easy enough. If you are using a bowl, cover the pudding with greaseproof paper and tinfoil and tie with string (this is where the lip on the bowl comes in handy). For both, make sure that no moisture can get in or out.

In a large pot, place a saucer upside down on the bottom, put your pudding bowl on top and fill half way with boiling water from the kettle you boiled a few moments ago. Cook for an hour and a half, keeping an eye on the water level to make sure it doesn’t go dry – if so, just add more boiling water.

When done, lift out carefully – the steam can burn you. Serve with loads of custard (the stuff from the packet).