Christmas Pud! Especially for my niece Caroline who I promised to send the recipe to last year and didnt!

Its just past the Autumn Equinox when the nights are longer than the days and therefor time for the making of Christmas Puddings! It may seem a little early and way before 'Stir up Sunday' but doing them now gives them time to mature and fill with that dark, rich flavour.
4oz plain flour
1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
4oz vegetable suet
4oz muscovado sugar
1 1/2lbs mixed dried fruit
4oz mixed peel
4oz breadcrumbs
2oz flaked and toasted almonds
zested rind of an orange and a lemon
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon tincture and 1 teaspoon ginger tincture
1 1/2 tablespoons black treacle
150mls brandy
200mls Guinness.

I throw it all into the Kenwood Chef and mix for about 5 minutes, if you do it in a food processor it chops the fruit and the texture goes a bit samey without the delicious jewels of fruit.
I then leave it for 48 hours for the alcohol to infuse into the fruit.
It then gets slopped into 3 greased pudding basins with a layer of parchment paper on the top of the mix and another piece of parchment paper tied round the rim. The whole bowl is then encased in foil .
Steaming takes about 6 hours standing in a covered pan of boiling water taking care not to let the pan go dry. If you have a big enough pan you can do them all together. Or you can do them in a pressure cooker for an hour. This is one of the few times in the year that the pressure cooker comes out  but it sure makes a huge difference and stops the kitchen becoming like a Chinese laundry with all the steam.
When cooled they are popped into a cupboard ready for eating. The first one for the Halloween Feast and the other two for Yule and Christmas. To warm them again  stick them in the pressure cooker for about 20 minutes or into one of those new fangled microwave thingies for 2 minutes. I don't have much truck with microwaves as like a dish washer they wont fit into the small kitchen without having to get rid of something useful.
Already to go for Winter , no excuses, the best Christmas pudding you can eat.

Tiny kitchen

After being away for a week in a mobile home on the coast with a teeny kitchen we are now back and cooking onwards although when we were away I did cook Moules marinere which I have a love hate relationship with. The last lot I ate made me really ill, though that was probably because they were cooked in scrumpy, not a good idea!
These however were luscious and plump and called to me from the wet fish counter at Waitrose.

One white onion gentle cooked in butter for 10 minutes till translucent, 1/2 bottle of dry white wine poured onto the onions and brought to the boil with black pepper. Throw in the cleaned mussels and steam in the wine for about five or six minutes. They are ready when the mussels open. Scatter with chopped parsley and eat with delicious french bread! Nom, nom, nom!