SUMMER IN A PUDDING

tart red delights

Last week I wrote here about the pleasure of being in Oxford for the annual Oxford Food Symposium.

I found this special day lily in the garden when I returned home, a sign of full summer

I flew back to Toronto the evening before my birthday. The air was hazy with smoke from the wildfires in Manitoba. Though I’d been away for a bare eight days, it felt like a whole different season had arrived.

home-grown shishito from the plant flourishing by the back door

I re-anchored myself the next morning with a breakfast of leftover pilaf (that had been brought to the house by friends a few days earlier) topped with two fried eggs, plus a chopped shishito pepper from a pot outside the back door. What luxury to have it there, already loaded with peppers.

eggs over pilaf, with shishito

My head was still full of images, thoughts, and feelings from the Symposium. Our topic/theme this year, chosen by Sympposiasts at the end of the 2022 Symposium, was food and the Elements. The papers presented found many kinds of elements to investigate: weather and climate change; the periodic table and elements that are valuable for the brain; culinary uses of gold; salt, salts, ash, cal for nixtamalisation; water; the tastes bitter and sour; humours and equivalent elements in Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic practice……. and much more.

We’ll be meeting again online almost daily on Zoom until the end of July to discuss the papers and to talk with each of the keynote speakers and each of the guest chefs. It’s a rich prospect. If you’d like to participate, you can register for the online Conference, at the Oxford Food Symposium website. That gives you access to all the papers, videos of the keynotes, and more. Highly recommended.

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: tart red fruit for summer pudding

A friend came by in the morning with birthday wishes and treats: a beautiful bouquet of poppies, in dazzling shades of red, orange, yellow, pink, and subtleties in between, as well as a few white ones, all on slender curvy green stems.

the birthday poppies

And she brought many small boxes of fresh raspberries, red currants, and blackberries. It was a rich trove that called out “summer pudding” to me.

Everyone seems to have views about summer pudding. There are fancy versions, and simple ones. Mine is at the simple end, food for any time of day. All you need is a medium bowl, that holds about a litre/quart or a bit more; good close-textured bread (my preference) or plain cake of some kind to line the bowl; and lots of fresh tart berries. My preference is raspberries and red and/or white currants, plus a few black currants if you have them. I like to cook the fruit a little, until just softened and releasing juices, before assembling the pudding.

I picked the gleaming red currants off their thin stemlets, added sugar, and left them in a bowl to macerate, about 2 cups currants and ½ cup sugar. In the afternoon I cycled to the Tuesday market at Trinity-Bellwoods to get a tender whole-grain brioche from dawnthebaker of Evelyn’s Crackers. There’s a lovely freedom in pedalling through the city on a hot day, wearing a light cotton dress, cooled by the breeze of my passage.

After buying the brioche I picked up a small punnet of raspberries from Paul at Footsteps Farm. I shared some of them with Dawn, and then wandered around the market, eating the rest one by one, the whole box, tasting summer, tasting my birthday, bursts of tart berry enlivening my tongue and my throat.

I have a simple pale blue bowl that is the perfect size for summer pudding. I sliced the brioche, put the small end piece, a tender crust, in the bottom of the bowl, and pressed the soft slices against the sides of the bowl, overlapping them a bit, until they lined it completely. I didn’t cut off the crusts. I cooked the sugared red currants in a small pan over medium heat, adding a touch of water, and after a couple of minutes I stirred in the raspberries from two small punnets, nearly 4 cups altogether. In a few more minutes the fruits had softened but still were recognisable. I didn’t add any liquor, nor any more sugar.

Once the fruit had cooled a little (I could have waited longer, but it was late and I was jet-lagged), I spooned most of the fruit liquid onto the bread that lined the bowl, then added the fruit. Another slice of brioche went on top of the richly red heap, sealing it in. I poured the last of the fruit liquid onto it, then topped the pudding with a small plate that fit exactly inside the rim of the bowl. A small glass container of leftovers went on top to weight it down. I cleared a space in the fridge and put it in to chill overnight.

the pressed pudding still in its bowl, just before being turned out/flipped over

Dawn came by in the morning with a container of home-made crème fraiche. I ran a knife around the inside of the bowl of pudding then put a rimmed plate on top and flipped it over. Bingo, a red-stained mound, a curved promise of fresh summer. The brioche and fruit had become densely packed and the brioche had soaked up the liquid. Slices of pudding held together beautifully as I cut them. The crème fraiche added another layer of delight.

my idea of luxury: moist, tart, inviting

You might not think of summer pudding as breakfast food. But I think of it as anytime food for a summer day, especially in my birthday week.

You can see that this is a second helping of pudding and creme fraiche