The New English Kitchen: Changing the Way You Shop, Cook and Eat

Push any leftover compote through a sieve to make a sauce. To turn the pudding out, run a blunt knife between the bread casing and the bowl. Invert a plate on top and turn the basin and plate over. If you have ever got water in your gumboots, you will know the noise a summer pudding makes when it unmoulds. Pour over the sauce to cover any white patches. Serve with crème fraîche.

kitchen note

Frozen English berries, organic or conventionally farmed, are a wonderful source of winter fruit and, unlike exotic fruits, they are free of air freight and fossil fuel issues. I use them to make summer puddings in winter for school packed lunches or simply to cheer everyone up. I find them in supermarkets but also in farm shops in big chest freezers.

toffee pudding

Constance Spry again, with a pudding whose flavour has only to be tasted to be loved. I have fed this to everyone and, despite its obvious fudgy stickiness and collapsed appearance, they all say how light it is. Recipe trickery at its best.

Serves 4

120g/4oz butter

120g/4oz demerara sugar

240g/8oz golden syrup

300ml/

/

pint milk

4 thick slices of bread, crusts removed, cut into fingers

whipped cream, to serve

Heat the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a small pan and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and keep warm. In a separate pan, heat the milk to boiling point. Put the fingers of bread in a dish and pour over the milk. Lift them out, put them into 4 serving bowls and pour over the sauce – you can dip them in the sauce instead but you will have to work fast. Serve immediately, with whipped cream.

winter charlotte with rhubarb and raspberries

For charlottes, buttered day-old bread is placed on top of the fruit and the pudding is baked. Apples and berries make good charlottes, and it is even possible to make a savoury charlotte with chicory, apple and spices that have been slowly cooked until sweet.

Here is a baked winter version of summer pudding, filled with forced rhubarb and frozen raspberries.

Serves 6

about 8 slices of day-old white bread, crusts removed (reserve

them for breadcrumbs, if you like – see here (#u2c33e651-eef1-4889-8b52-d965765cb8aa))

softened unsalted butter

ground cinnamon

700g/1

/

lb forced rhubarb, cut into 2cm/

/

inch lengths

(see here (#litres_trial_promo))

400g/14oz frozen raspberries

golden caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6. Butter the bread slices and sprinkle with a little cinnamon. Cut each slice into quarters, then into 8 small triangles.

Put the rhubarb and raspberries into a pan, cover and cook over a low heat until the rhubarb is just soft. Add enough sugar to sweeten to your taste, then pour into a shallow ovenproof dish. Arrange the triangles of bread on top, buttered-side up, working in a fish-scale pattern. Bake the charlotte for about half an hour, until the surface of the bread is golden brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle caster sugar on top. Serve with fresh custard (see here (#litres_trial_promo)) or thick double cream.

brioche and fig pudding

For the last 15 years it has been easy to buy French-style breads in almost every town. Purists will quibble at their quality, but they have the slight sourness, crust and tearable dough that make French breads so wonderful. Next to arrive has been brioche – and no, it’s not as good as the artisan-style buttery bread whose fragrance pours out of pâtisseries across the Channel, but it’s not bad either. Our local late-night shop always sells brioche loaves wrapped in plastic, which keep for a suspiciously long time. They are too claggy to eat fresh but make terrific emergency puddings.

Serves 4

10 slices of brioche

5 ready-to-eat dried figs, sliced

4 egg yolks

300ml/

/

pint whole milk

125ml/4fl oz double cream

1 tablespoon golden caster sugar

/

teaspoon vanilla extract

a pinch of grated nutmeg

caster sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas Mark 5. Toast the brioche slices in a dry frying pan over a medium heat; they burn very easily, so be careful. Cut the slices into triangles and arrange them in overlapping layers in an ovenproof dish, points/corners up. Slot a slice of fig between each one.

Whisk the egg yolks into the milk and add the cream, sugar and vanilla. Put in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring, but do not let it boil. As soon as it thickens slightly, pour it over the brioche and figs and scatter a pinch of nutmeg on to the surface. Bake the pudding for 20–30 minutes, until golden on top and just set. Dust with caster sugar and serve with cream.