The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

Brak: Okay. Here’s another one. Why were the little strawberries upset?
Zorak: (Sigh) Because they were in a jam.
Brak: Nooooo, because they were in a j- ohhhh, you heard it.
Zorak: Yes, I heard it. About a hundred years ago.
Brak: You already heard the joke about the little strawberries.
Zorak: That’s right. So, Brak, know any good jokes?
Brak: No, not many.

Nothing says warm English dessert like hot sugary raspberry goo surrounded by a layer of shredded animal fat mixed with flour. Yes, that’s right it’s time for Cooking with Guise.

Cooking With Guise – Jam Roly-Poly PuddingRoly-Poly Pudding is a bit like swiss roll, only less cakey and more doughy, it’s really quite versatile a dish as you can change the filling so much that you can have different fruit flavours for a sweet treat or fill it with cheese for a side piece or even fill it with a minced meat, cover in gravy and have a version of suet meatloaf.

For this recipe you’ll need to get some fat from around the organs of an old cow or sheep and shred it up fine, now some people swear by the hand torn method but personally I choose to buy my suet pre-shredded from a supermarket.

The full ingredients are, according to the recipe I found:

250g/8oz self-raising flour
pinch salt
125g/4oz shredded suet
90-120ml/6-8tbsp water
4 tbsp raspberry jam, warmed
a little milk
1 egg, beaten, and caster sugar to glaze

With your ingredients at hand, you first need to sift the flour into a bowl with the salt. Now, it’s vry important to take a metric pinch of salt, and not the imperial measure, as you can make it too salty by using the wrong kind, the Jamie Oliver cooking range offers the Jamie Oliver Salt Pinher that can be a great aid in completing the task (though be sure to set the finger distances at single pinch).

Once that has been sifted, you’ll want to look at the suet. Don’t. It’ll remind you of the documentary about the breeding cycle of several types of mites and insects, and you’ll be trying to eat it later. Instead, tip the suet straight in to the bowl with the flour and salt.

Pour in enough water so that you can smack things around in the bowl and make a soft dough. No matter how hard you try, the dough will always stick to everything that is around. Even stuff in drawers will be caked in the stuff by the time you are done.

Sift flour on to a bread board, it’s at this stage you should begin to doubt whether your board will be big enough. It won’t be, but that’s ok. Take a hold of the mixed goop and begin kneading it in to one basic blob shape, resist the urge to make smiley faces in the mix as it becomes disturbing when you get round to rolling it out.

Flour your rolling pin a little and smush that blob down, stretching it out until you realise you don’t have enough room on the bread board to get it long and wide enough.

Now, take your jam and put it in a microwaveable bowl – you can obviously use a stove top for this, but I’m fairly lazy and like to think my food can be slightly radioactive. Put the bowl in the microwave and set it to melt, this takes about 1.5 minutes in an 800W microwave and you get the fun of watching solid lumps of jam bubble and ooze.

Open the microwave and take a minute to smell that warm jam, mmm. Soft, warm, moist, squidgy…

…

…

…

Sorry, my mind drifted off there.

Take the jam back to the jam back to the pastry and slowly slather the warm, moist, squidgy goo over it’s thick, firm body. Spoon and stroke, guys.

Now, if you haven’t had enough space on the bread board, this is where you’ll find out. The jam will be a few millimeters thick and as you try to fold the pastry over, it’ll splurge out every opening like so many cheap internet videos, but try and roll it over itself.

If like me, you’ll find you haven’t got nearly enough pastry and you’ll have to settle for one and a half folds and a puddle of jam where you over filled. Don’t worry, it happens to everyone first time, it doesn’t mean you aren’t as good…

Place your splurging mass on a baking sheet and bung in a very hot place for quite a bit of time, until it looks like the jam has burnt hard on the surface and the temperature inside will require corrective surgery to the tongue (200C/400F/Gas 6 for 35-40 minutes).

Remove the pudding from the oven and sprinkle on a little caster sugar and serve hot with custard.

The end result was…well, a little dry, but quite tasty. It was more pie pastry-like than the doughy kind.