Jungle Red Writers: summer cooking

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Once more, we have the magnificent Celia Wakefield today, this time sharing a recipe for a delightful summer dessert that looks impressive but that's secretly (shhhh!) not hard to make at all.

Good morning, good morning to you all. It’s great to be back with JRW’ers, does that tag make sense? Probably not but I have an adulthood sprinkled with initials. I think it may be the fault of IBM. I do wonder who first said to Mr. Watson, Sr., “Sir, International Business Machines, is rather a mouthful, how about we trademark as IBM, Sir, what do you think?” And Mr. W. being a very savvy biz man, probably handed him one stock certificate in reward, which at that time didn’t cost anything. But we do know that his chauffeur ended up a millionaire back, back in the day.

Well that was an introduction with no relevance to my subject at all. Perhaps Julia won’t edit it out. A few weeks ago Julia had a birthday. Yes, birthdays, do you love or hate them? Is it a judgement about getting older? Or like me, do you revel in your birthday, having no shame to share the news with all and sundry as you go through your birthday time. I’m sure my response to birthdays has some long lost reaction to something from my childhood, but enough about me, this was Julia’s birthday and it happened that she was free that evening. Come On Over!

I needed a dessert which said, “Hooray it’s your birthday. I know, go out and buy a cake, but I don’t like to buy what I can make. I had local strawberries, blueberries and some cherries which were a little past their sell day, so what to do? Make a summer pudding. Remembering a pudding that I had wanted to make for years but never tried because it appeared complicated, I made a Summer Pudding. Wikipedia states, “It first appears in print with its current name in 1904, but identical recipes for 'hydropathic pudding' and 'Malvern pudding' from as far back as 1868 have been found.^”

Now I may have mentioned once or several times that I am not a baker, even having turned out many batches of shortbread during COVID. This became blindingly obvious on July Fourth. Now this is not a holiday that I grew up observing. I do have a memory of going to the Fourth of July USA Celebration at the home of the American Counsel General in Burundi. Burundi had just gained independence from Belgium and were most grateful to the United Nations who had been the major player in creating that freedom. As my father was the Representative (Ambassador), in the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, he was popular with the Africans. Father had found a large powder blue American auto, (1950’s winged style), in Usumbura which he purchased for his official car and in which my mother and I drove around town with the UN flag on the front headlight. My biggest claim to fame. On moving to the USA, I was happy to embrace another holiday even if I was one of the bad guys.

But back to baking. Our first over-Covid Fourth meant we should invite folk over. Julia came with another friend, Samantha, who is a professional baker. I couldn’t serve summer pudding a second time but with more local strawberries I decided on shortcake strawberries and cream. To cut a painful tale short, I burned the shortcake bottoms, I think I read the recipe wrong. It was from Nigella, the baking goddess, and as she is English I should have understood it but that’s my excuse. Lovely Samantha kindly took the grater and removed the burnt bottoms. One can serve anything with enough cream

Here is the deconstructed shortcake..

Julia commented that baking really did stress me, and it was time to put it down as a skill which led us to the choice of summer pudding for today.I think the origin of summer pudding is probably much older than the Wiki comment states. White bread was a luxury item because the making thereof was most labor intensive. It was only affordable for the wealthy until the mid nineteenth century when industrial developments in flour processing came in. I would hazard a guess that any leftover or stale white bread needed a recipe to turn it into something delicious, ergo summer pudding was born and it is delicious.

This is easy to make, needs very little cooking and is made with the freshest of summer soft fruit, an English term for strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, cherries, red and black currents and of course our blueberries, which due to climate change are being heavily cultivated in the south of England, plus a few slices of stale white bread. Like most easy things there is a catch, summer pudding must be made leaving at least eight hours for the juices to meld and seep into the bread making a delicious melody of flavors.