Beef pudding

Makes 1 pudding in a 17 cm (6½ inch/No. 30) basin (mould)

Filling

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) stewing beef (I prefer chuck steak, fatty bits removed)

plain (all-purpose) flour, enough to give the meat a dusting

1 large onion

5 small mushrooms, halved

1 thyme stalk

1 bay leaf

a generous grinding of the pepper mill

125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) dark ale, such as porter, stout or a Belgian monastery beer (if you don’t want to use alcohol, use the same quantity of beef stock)

Suet pastry

300 g (10½ oz/2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour

130 g (4½ oz) shredded suet

1 teaspoon baking powder

juice of ½ lemon(about 2 tablespoons)

200 ml (7 fl oz) water

a pinch of salt

1 teaspoon thyme leaves or finely chopped parsley

Prepare the pudding basin. Preheat the oven to 160°C (315°F).

To make the suet pastry, put the flour, suet and baking powder in a bowl and combine very well. Add the lemon juice to the water and start adding it to the mixture in small amounts, stirring constantly. Soon it will be looking like very coarse breadcrumbs. Keep adding water until you can bring the mixture together with your hands into a stiff dough.

If it is too dry, you might need another splash of water, but I have tested it several times in different weather conditions and haven’t needed more water. The dough should not be sticky, make sure of that.

Keep one-third of the dough aside for the lid of the pudding. Now pad both pieces of dough into balls and lay them on a generously floured work surface. Roll each ball of dough out gently to 1 cm (3/8 inch) thickness.

Carefully place the dough for the base of the pudding over the basin and let it slide in. It is not the end of the world if it tears, you can just repair it using your fingers. Mould the dough to the basin sides, pressing down so the edges are all the same thickness. Trim off extra dough around the sides.

Now start to arrange the raw meat, vegetables and herbs in the pudding basin and season with pepper. You can first brown the meat in a frying pan over medium heat, if you like. If you have leftover cooked beef stew, you can use this instead of the meat filling.

When the basin is nearly full, pour in the beer or stock and add the lid, arranging the pastry over the rim of the basin and carefully squeezing the dough together. You might need to just lightly wet the edges of the pastry to make it stick.

Now prepare your pudding for steaming. Steam for 2–4 hours, depending on your meat. If you’ve used precooked beef stew, steam for no more than 1 hour.

Why not take a leaf out of Alexis Soyer’s book and use kidneys for a traditional steak and kidney pudding or oysters instead of mushrooms? You can also substitute venison and red currants for the beef and mushrooms, or try apple and pork.