Market Plates
A lovely winter warmer to serve to friends or the family on a cold winter evening or Sunday afternoon is suet pudding.
Most often associated with British cuisine it is thought to date back as far as the 14th Century and was a way of preserving meat or fruit at the end of a season.
Suet puddings can be either sweet or savoury and are either boiled or steamed, favourites include spotted dick, Christmas pudding or steak and kidney pudding.
A variation that we like to cook at the MB is oxtail pudding. Oxtail is an under-used but inexpensive lean cut of meat which makes it a great choice, especially for people on a budget.
You may think at first glance this recipe looks daunting but stick with it, we have made it as simple as possible and the results are well worth it.
Recipe – serve 2-4
2kg oxtail
300g onions
100g celery
150g carrots
150g leeks
200g mushrooms
½ bay leaf
5 sprigs of thyme
10 black peppercorns
1 star anise
8 tbsp brandy
250ml red wine
2l good beef stock
500g self-raising flour
250g shredded suet
6g salt
300ml cold water
Method
Brown the oxtail on all sides and remove from the pan, deglaze the pan with the brandy and wine, make sure it catches alight to burn off the alcohol.
Put the oxtail in a pressure cooker, brown the vegetables and put them with the herbs and spices also into the pressure cooker.
Bring to full pressure and cook for two hours. Let the cooker cool and remove the meat, strain the remaining liquid and reduce in a pan on the hob to a nice thick sauce (skim off the fat). Take the meat off the bone and season to taste.
Meanwhile, make the pastry by combining all the ingredients, cling and chill for half-an-hour.
Roll the pastry out and line a well buttered pudding mould. Put in the oxtail and some of the sauce, pop a disk of pastry on the top and close it up, steam the pudding for 2½ hours. Turn out and serve with some seasonal vegetable and the remaining sauce. Lovely!
You can add ox kidneys, chestnut or porcini mushrooms or baby onions to this recipe and the filling is nice served on its own as a stew.
If you haven’t got a pressure cooker you can also cook this recipe on the hob or in the oven on a low heat in a casserole dish, but please allow four or five hours cooking time.
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 26 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
