IT is the time of year when all sensible people are making Summer Pudding, one of the great creations that proves the British genius for puddings.
What’s extraordinary is that there are still some people out there who don’t know how to make it, and a lot of silly recipes around that can’t resist complicating this wonderfully simple pudding. Delia Smith’s recipe tells you to butter the bread – no, that’s just confusing Summer Pudding with Bread Pudding, a very different matter. The latter is cooked, in a custard, and contains eggs and dried fruit. The clever thing about Summer Pudding is that it’s not cooked, which is just the point of it. It was invented by frugal nannies and housewives to avoid lighting a fire or switching on an oven in summer. One recipe I found on the internet even says you can use rhubarb!! Ugh. Never put in lemon zest – the summer berries have quite enough acid of their own. And there is absolutely no need to butter the dish.
Take a mixture of summer berries, preferably picked fresh from your own garden. Strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and blackberries are all good. Raspberries on their own are excellent. Slightly squashy ones are all right so long as they are really fresh and haven’t gone off or dried out. At a pinch you can include some very ripe loganberries, but if you do, remember to double the amount of sugar. Some people use cherries, in which case you have to stone them. The fruit should be enough to nearly fill the pudding-basin you are going to use, which should have a rounded bottom. Pick out any stalks or stray insects, put the fruit in a saucepan, barely cover with water and add enough sugar to make the syrup sweet. There’s no hard and fast rule as berries and tastes vary, but about a heaped tablespoon of sugar for every handful of fruit is a good start. Raise it to simmering point for a few minutes, just long enough to dissolve the sugar, because remember, the fruit should not be cooked.
Line the pudding-basin with slices of white bread. It hasn’t got to be stale, and I think it’s well worth a bit of fresh bread. It certainly shouldn’t be more than a day old. Take off the crusts if you like, if you can’t remember the War, in which case to do so will shock you too much. After stirring and tasting the fruit, to make sure the sugar is dissolved and there’s enough, spoon it into the bowl, cover it with a last slice of bread, put a saucer on top that fits into your bowl, and weigh it down well. After chilling for a few hours in the fridge it should be ready to serve with cream. The bread, saturated with sweetened juice, will be transformed into a moist sponge the colour of claret wine.
And DON’T make another to freeze and bring it out at Christmas. Things like Summer Pudding should be enjoyed in their fleeting season, just in those few weeks when the berries are there in the garden and the days are long.