First a little background information. The wife and I are big fans of Terry Pratchett’s Disk World series. We were both introduced to this series though the TV miniseries adaptation of The Hogfather. Both of us have since taken up reading his books. I think I have 7 or 8 left in the main series. For Halloween this year we went as characters from The Hogfather, I went as Death and Valah went as Susan, Death’s granddaughter. I documented making the costumes on my project blog here. As I made a Death of Rats for our costume we thought he would make a nice mantel decoration for the holidays (you can have your elf on the shelf, I prefer Death of Rats on the mantel, and I know it does not rhyme).

So, as we have done now a few times, we are also not traveling for the holidays this year. While we love seeing friends and family, traveling all over the West Coast just is not a very relaxing break in between terms, so we decided to just stay home this year. Every year we have stayed home I have done a roast duck. It began as I am not a big turkey fan, and we wanted something small, but fun, for Christmas dinner the first year we stayed here in Idaho. This year, however, we are going to do a goose. We have talked about it before, but cost was a bit of an issue. We are doing pretty well at the moment, so goose it is. Somewhere in the planning of this The Hogfather merged with the goose dinner and I have decided we are doing a traditional British goose dinner for Christmas, or rather, Hogswatch dinner. After several days of research we have settled on a menu of mostly traditional dishes that are even now common in the UK, but not so much here (for some of them). Here is our full menu.

• Potted shrimp
• Roast Goose
• Roasted Potatoes
• Roasted carrots and parsnips
• Sautéed Brussel sprouts and bacon
• Pigs in a blanket (English style)
• Gravy
• Bread Sauce
• Christmas pudding with hard Sauce

As this is a cooking blog, and this kind of meal should be fun to sort out, you can expect installments over the next week as we prep the meal, and probably a nice long post on or the day after the big event on cooking it all.

Now, we do have two big problems with this menu. The first is that we simply cannot get the chipolata sausage needed for proper pigs in a blanket. The second was that for most traditional Christmas pudding recipes we needed to have made the pudding 3 weeks ago. Well, the second issue we were able to resolve quite quickly as I ran across this recipe from Jamie Oliver. It does not require a month long set, nor an 8 hour steam, just 3 hours. Looking at the comments I did discover it matures with a bit of a set, so that was today’s project, making the Christmas pudding so it can have a week under the bed to age, just a little.

Many other Christmas pudding recipes called for the dried fruit to macerate in brandy at least overnight. Looking, again, at the comments I found someone who had done that with no issues on the Oliver recipe. So last night I set raisins, golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried tart cherries, and dried apricots to soak in a regional apple brandy. As we could not find san vito, brandy was out best bet for a substitute. The brandy itself is quite sweet with just a hint of apple. It was nice in a cup of eggnog last night, and I think it will be great in a hot mug of mulled cider.

After breakfast this morning I started the process of making the pud. I assembled all the other ingredients, with a few substitutes. We cannot get caster sugar here, but baker’s sugar is similar in size to caster sugar, and we usually have some as it is the sugar of choice for my shortbread recipe. We also could not find suet, so instead we used lard. The rest of the ingredients simply needed weighed out.

dates pitted and waiting to be chopped

chopped candied ginger

lard

orange zest

The brandy left from macerating the fruit. Figured it would work just as well as fresh out of the bottle, probably better.

Then came the mixing. Traditionally all the people in the house are supposed to stir the mix adding in their wishes for the New Year. So we did that. We did not add in coins or silver trinkets, which is also traditional. Mostly because we were worried that the not so silver coins we have would impart a metallic taste to the pudding.

Valah stirring

Coowee (Valah’s mom) takes her turn

Raven stirs some more

I forgot we had one other little hurdle, we did not have a proper pudding basin, and did not want to wait until mid-week to get one from Amazon. So we found a bowl that we figured would work based on what we had seen online. With that bowl greased the mix went in and then we wrapped it in foil, and tied a string round it. Turns out, looking at things later, we tied the string wrong. I thought it went around horizontally to kind of make a seal. In fact you tie it like a package to have a handle to lift the basin out of the pot. Well we used our big canning kettle as our steaming pot, so no need for a handle. We then steamed it for 3 hours, checking every half an hour to replenish the water. The house was warm and almost humid for that time. We also could not see out of any windows, even the far living room one was fogged over.

Our makeshift pudding mold

pudding in the bowl before steaming

ready to steam

The far living room window all fogged up

After our three hours we pulled the thing out and let it cool. Inside we found, well a Christmas pudding. I recovered it in foil, tied it, the correct way this time, and with a plastic lid over the top it is now sitting in a cool dry place (under our bed) until Hogswatch day when we will steam it, again, for an hour to heat it back up, then light it on fire and eat it with spiked butter.

After steaming 3 hours

Ready for a week under the bed

Just in case you are wondering, we do have a solution to the chipolata sausage issue. That should be arriving Wednesday.