Childhood: Steamed Suet Pudding with Bacon and Leeks

Returning home to see the folks is always daunting. The memories of youth are most precious, a captive of years spent doing nothing more than climbing trees, spearing hedges with sharpened sticks, fingers in bowls of cake mix, robinson's lemon barley, rugby in the park and jumpers for goalposts. They are kept safe by the prison bars of adulthood, accessed fleetingly and only when the dark days come calling for a sense of grounding. It's important to keep them intact, for when we are old and grey these will be the memories that inform who, or what we are.

I suppose that your grown-up ambitions are derived from your experience as a child. It can't be a coincidence that very often, people follow their parents into their fields of employment. If you are surrounded by music whilst growing up, it's almost impossible to not develop an aptitude for music yourself. For me, I was (am) lucky to have two parents who could both cook very well. It's a great tragedy that so many children are raised without an understanding of how wonderful food can be - if they did, I'm sure that the current trend toward obesity in the UK would be nullified.

So when I return home, in the back of my mind, I am aware that the childhood memory box is about to be re-opened. There are certain dishes that my parents cook which carry with them a sense of place, a smell, a look and of course, a taste. Steamed puddings are one of those quintessentially British foods, that most other cultures don't understand. It's fairly unique in culinary circles: an dish that is truly British. It utilises a very different ingredient - Suet - and to quote Simon Hopkinson:

"...there is one particular ingredient that will forever be part of traditional British cooking, and that is suet. Apart from being one of the most original forms of lubrication in cooking, this crumbly, white animal fat is also extremely easy to work with......when asked about British cooking, I am often stumped as to what nit really is these days; that tiresome moniker "Modern British" seems to refer to nothing more than something in a sticky jus......[but] freshly grated or chopped suet is the Super League stuff."

A steamed suet pudding, cooked correctly, is a delicious, light, filling dish that can be filled with either sweet or savoury fillings. For dessert, I can think of nothing better than a steamed Apple & Blackberry Pudding with real custard. As a main course, my parents and I would fill the pudding with Bacon trimmings and sauteed leeks. This would then be served with the most delicious onion white sauce with nutmeg, and some green vegetables. When it would arrive at the dinner table, I would watch with awe as the pudding would be carved, like a joint of meat, steaming, juicy. Frankly, fairly sexy but also cheap and honest. And nowadays a direct link to my core, aged seven. A time before any sort of responsibility or awareness of the world. If there is such a thing, it was at time of perfection.