SC - The great Christmas pudding experiment. And quinces! [Partial OOP]

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Lurking Girl wrote:
> 
> there I was, <snip> with various wounds in my fingers, grease
> everywhere, and an extreme loss of temper, but a bunch of grated suet.
> How does everyone else manage this problem?  I could feel the difference
> in consistency between stuff grated and stuff just chopped, but there
> must be some trick to it.  Can anyone advise?

In ascending order of usefulness (but then again, maybe...)

	A) As long as we're quoting from the Marx Brothers, "Get tough with
them, Pinky! Tougher! Now get tough with both of them!" I guess what I'm
trying to say is sometimes you just have to do it, and you can make
yourself do such unpleasant jobs, and they get easier when you do them a
couple of times. Some jobs in kitchens are inherently intimidating, like
peeling a hundred pounds of potatoes, say, but the trick is to start
with the first one and not think about how far away the last one is.

	B) You might see if the butcher could run the suet through the
grinder...I've done this when making crepinettes or faggots from various
potentially dry meats like venison. The end result is a fairly clean
product in even-sized particles with most of the membranes removed.
Maybe not the same as grated suet, but my suspicion is that steamed
puddings may originally have used chopped suet -- "great lumps of fat",
in fact, "As big as my two thumbs", or words to that effect. In any case
ground suet does work. 
> 
> though I couldn't find anything in the store called sultanas (I knew
> they were raisinish,

Yellow raisins are generally considered a fair but not identical substitute.
> 
> [Period section]
> 
> Deep breath.  Now, the contignac.  I was following the recipe in Scully's
> _Early French Cookery_.  Lost a fingernail in peeling the quinces.
> Boiled them in wine until soft, okay fine.  Now, push through a strainer.
> 
> Welcome to Hell.
> 
> My strainer is a pretty fine mesh, and even a soft quince requires a
> heck of a lot of effort to get through there.  I pushed, rubbed, and
> snarled for as long as it took the goop reached room temperature, and
> over half of it was still on the wrong side of the mesh.  As a test, I put
> a big spoonful into the blender, but the consistency was definitely
> different; it wouldn't do.

A decent aid is a large plastic cap, say, from a quart mayonnaise jar.
I've found that to be [sometimes] The Professional Tool Of Choice; you
kind of wear it on your knuckles and push with a slight sliding motion,
as if the mesh of the strainer were a grater. Then, of course, you could
try a Mouli or Foley Food Mill. If you wanted to make this stuff in
quantity, I bet you could borrow the Provincial food mill, a.k.a.
Gigantor. I seem to recall picking up a smaller one, too, and leaving it
in with the Provincial cooking gear.
 
> At this point, I checked on the pudding, and life got worse.  The
> steam had poofed up the pudding cloth and the string had slipped right
> off.  So I had to try and reach into a pot full of steam to get a wet
> slippery string back on a wet slippery bowl.  Which I did.  And it
> promptly popped off again.

There's probably a trick to tying it; Susan makes a rice dumpling
wrapped in (I think) lotus leaves, tied up with string and steamed.
Since the pudding, like rice, expands in three dimensions, you could
probably wrap the string along several axes (plural of axis, not weapons
of war) and solve this problem. Try, for example, going over the top and
around, then again ninety degrees apart, _then_ around the waist of the
pudding bowl. Then, if that doesn't work, you can get really serious
about tying it. Also, some of your problem was probably internal steam.
Try using a coarser, gauzier cloth or even consider poking a couple of
holes with a fork to allow steam to escape.   

> Since I couldn't tell, I commended the mess into the hands of whatever
> power or saint was ignoring me anyways and let it boil a while.
> Scully says it's supposed to be a candylike mass, but mine kept
> looking like applesauce.  (Red, non chunky.)  After about 45 min., it
> had still shown no change except that it was lower in the saucepan, so
> I called it done and put it in a shallower pan to let cool.  Tastes
> nice, but not terribly exciting, even though I dug up galingale and
> used some of my precious Real Cinnamon from the pepperer's guild.
> Consistency is rather like apple butter, but somewhat more heavy and
> "meaty".

I believe the finished product (if you can judge from later recipes) is
supposed to be a lechemeat: you can slice it. Once it cooks down enough,
try putting it into a wide pan on high heat, and stirring constantly.
Adjust your heat to avoid splatters; as the sugar concentration gets
higher it will have a higher boiling temperature. It'll be done when it
forms a cohesive drop on a plate or some such, or when you can pull your
spoon through the mass and it leaves clearly-defined walls like a
miniature canyon.
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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