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| Plum Duff 101 This is the family recipe--yet another variation on the popular Scottish theme of boiling flour, fruit, and suet in a giant vat of water for hours. Also known (apparently) as "spotted dick". And, in Rita Celestial's family, "plum pudding". This sort of thing is usually served with a hard sauce, a practice I would normally endorse. But we've always had ours with the custard sauce, so that's what you get here. Hey, traditions are important! Likewise, most recipes of the duff/dick genre seem to call for baking the creature in a casserole dish, which I assure you is incorrect. The entirety of Celtic cuisine is based on a fanatical devotion to the belief that whatever can be boiled, will be boiled. Preferably in a cauldron, over an open pit--but this is not required. On a personal note, I can assure you that the boiling is the highlight of the plum duff preparation process. Seriously people, you can bake any old thing in a casserole dish, but how often do you get to pour dough in to a tea towel, tie it all up, and throw it into a bubbling tub o' death? This is baking at its most primal. You can't mess with a beautiful think like that.
Ingredients: 6 cups of flour (multipurpose) Now, my recipe card, given to me by my mother, reads as follows: Mix like cake, add raisins. Tie up in clean tea towel to form bag. Place in boiling water, boil for four hours. What I love about these instructions is that, while my mother saw fit to omit something like 95% of the process, she felt the need to tell me that I should use a clean tea towel. Was she herself ever so naive or harried that she failed to consider whether or not the cloth receptacle into which she was about to pour her uncooked desert was properly laundered? Did she ever, in a moment of panic, whisk a slightly used dish towel off of the oven door handle, and start pouring dough into it? Considering that she's been baking since the age of three, I somehow doubt it. And yet, she somehow imagined that I was capable of such folly. Well, the girl is her father's daughter, after all... Anyway, the actual instructions are a little more complicated that "mix, bag, and boil". I have called my mom many times, and this is what I've learned: Okay, first of all, before you get to do anything else, get the biggest pot you have, and fill it 3/4 full with water. Take an old plate and set it at the bottom of the pot. Put the pot on the stove and turn it on to "high". Do this first, because it takes a gigantic pot of water approximately one fortnight to come to a full boil. Now you may begin... Mix like cake: I didn't know what this meant, when I first read it. I had my suspicions, but I didn't know for sure. My mom and I certainly never made cake from scratch. Lots of other stuff, yeah, but not cake. We don't even like cake. What it means is: first, mix together the dry ingredients (which doesn't, by the way, included the raisins) in the biggest bowl you have. Then, dump the shortening into the dry stuff, and incorporate it by using two butter knifes to "cut" it into the dry stuff. Try it--you'll understand. Then, in a smallish bowl, beat the eggs and some milk (maybe 50/50). Stir the egg/milk mixture into the dry stuff with the biggest wooden spoon you have. When you've mixed it as good as you can, add some more milk and keep mixing. When you have wetted out all the dry ingredients and made a dough, add some more milk and keep mixing. Plum duff is actually a batter, not a dough. It should not be as wet and thin as pancake batter, but it should be close. When you eventually pour it out onto the towel, it should ooze just slowly enough that you can tie it up before it oozes all over the counter. But it should definitely ooze. If you use an old tea towel with holes, it should ooze out of the holes. If your batter is not wet and oozy enough, your duff will crack, and your clan will mock you. But, before we can worry about that, we have to... Add raisins. A finished plum duff is something like 50% raisins, so this step is important. If you just dump the raisins into the batter and stir, they will clump. You must not allow the raisins to clump. If you cut into your finished duff and discover clumped raisins, it will cause all the molecules in your body to spontaneously explode at the speed of light. Bad. Fortunately, you can avoid such a fate by using the following technique: Put your raisin into the second biggest bowl you have. Dump in small handful of flour, and fondle. Make sure each raisin is unclumped, and has a nice coating of flour. Then, and only then, stir the raisins into the batter. Then you're ready to... Tie up in a clean tea towel to form bag. Don't know what a tea towel is? It's like a dish towel that doesn't have any texture to it. It is an expanse of cotton cloth. Theoretically an old pillow case would be the idea vessel, but that just seems...icky. Tea towels, a.k.a. dish towels, a.k.a. hand towels, a.k.a. flour sack towels are sold in the grocery store in the same section where the canning lids are sold. Make sure you get the plain white ones, unless you want your plum duff to be dyed funky colors. And for the love of god, child, make sure the towel is clean! Whatever piece of cloth you use, I recommend cutting it in a square. Just trust me. Take some tong (don't have tongs? go to the store and buy them. now.) and dunk your towel into the boiling water. Take it out, let it drip, and then slap it down onto some clean expanse of counter top. Carefully spread it out so it is fully open. Grab the bowl of batter firmly with one arm, and use your free hand to wield a rubber spatula and coax the batter out onto the towel. Yes, it will ooze out on its own, eventually, but we don't have all day, here. Scrape down the bowl to get every last bit of batter, but don't take so long that any escapes onto the counter. Now, grab two opposite corners of the towel, and tie them together, tightly. It helps if you have two people for this part. Next, grab the other two corners, and tie them together. Keep pulling at each set of knots until you have them as tight as they will go. Ideally, you should have a completely closed sack at this point. That is, you should not be able to actually see any of your batter. If you can see batter, it is probably because your towel is too small to close all the way when you tie it. Unfortunately, if that's the case, there is not much you can do about it at this point. Some of your plum duff will boil out, but it will not be the end of the world. It's not like you have clumpy raisins, or anything. Just make a note of it, and next time use a bigger piece of cloth. And now, the coup de grace... Place in boiling water, boil for four hours. This step is actually pretty straightforward. The only piece of advice here is to lower the plum duff into the boiling water slowly--but I think survival instinct pretty much covers that one. I like to have a ladle and that big bowl handy, in case the water looks like it's going to overflow. Turn the heat to low. Cover. Check it every once in a while, to make sure that the water level doesn't get to low. After three and a half hours, you can start making the sauce. Custard Sauce: 1 pint milk (two cups) My mom's instructions for this part are: Heat and add eggs. Place in double boiler and keep hot. Not only does this passage make no sense whatsoever, I have no idea where it came from. Oh, my mom wrote it, that's for sure. But it is not what she does, or has ever instructed me to do. Perhaps she was possessed, when she wrote it. Anyway, here's the real instructions: My method (mom's old method): Put everything together in a saucepan, and whisk. Turn the heat to medium, and stir with a wooden spoon. Continue to stir, constantly, until you have lost the will to live (approx 20 minutes). Right about then, the sauce should be ready. If you need confirmation, the sauce should be think enough to cling to the spoon, and ooze off slowly. Remember, slow oozing is the key. Shorn describes the consistency as "room temperature syrup". Remove from heat, and add a pat of butter. Mom's (new) method: Whisk ingredients together in a bowl, and place in microwave. Microwave for five minutes, or so, on high. Remove and stir. Use your archane wisdom to gauge the doneness of the sauce, and thereby deduce the length and intensity of the next microwave session. Stir and repeat. If the sauce curdles, you have failed. Go back to method #1 until you gain more archane wisdom.
By this time, you plum duff should be done. (If it is not done after being boiled for four hours, something has gone horribly wrong.) Use your tongs to grab the knot and pull the plum duff out of the water. With your free hand, slip a slotted spoon--or some equally sturdy implement--under the duff. This is important, because the duff will be heavy. Maneuver the beast into a colander in the sink, knot up. Wave some pot holders at it in a futile attempt to help it cool faster. As soon as it has stopped dripping, and is cool enough for you to grab the loose ends of fabric with your hands, pick it up and place it on a cutting board. Carefully pull at the knots until you can loosen them. Peel the fabric away from the plum duff, and roll it over (so the side that was knotted is facing down.) If you have done everything right, your plum duff should look like a very large, soggy, slimy loaf of peasant style bread, with waaaay too many raisins. Breath a sigh of relief, and show your creation off to your clan members. If you have almost everything right, your plum duff may develop a crack, or several cracks. Or it may actually fall apart into two or several pieces. If this happens, do not despair. The final result will taste just as sweet. Simply ban your clan members from the kitchen until the plum duff is sliced and served--they will be none the wiser (yeah, right). After ten minutes, the slimy surface will be dry, and the plum duff will resemble a more normal loaf of bread. At this point, it is cool enough to cut. The easiest method is to cut the loaf into quarters, and then slice. Serve each person a slice, with plenty of sauce. Eat. Repeat. Lie down. Moan. Contemplate Scottish independence. Nap. |
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