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Tastes Of The Past

S

speaky

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One meal I yearn for is a piece bread, not your modern day crap bread, but a real piece from the past, all crusty and freshly baked by a small bakery as they used to be. Thickly covered with a good old dollop of dripping including the dark jelly that came with it, a liberal sprinkling of salt, and topped with a coating of that wonderful "Flag" brown sauce.
Then for afters, a big wedge of Bread Pudding!
Without doubt the so called culinary experts and dietitians of to-day will throw their arms up in the air with horror at such a meal. I say to them "get a life"! I and hundreds of thousands of other Brummies were brought up on a diet like that and my arteries are as a clear as a bell, and I feel privileged to have experienced such culinary delights and would be estatic to have it shoved under my nose for lunch to-day.
 
Speaky I dream of real Bread, But..........

I made a Bread Pudding last night in an enamel dish and I have just had 2" thick Doorstep of it :D
 
Alf! yer dead right there, it had to be in a well worn chipped enamel dish and at least two inches deep to get the full flavour of it. Can't remember when I last had such a delicacy, but probably before the old king died. That's what comes of marrying a Yorkshire lass, full of Yorkshire puds, but not a fleeting glimpse of any Bread Pudding! Now very soon there's going to be young ladies screaming at me "do it yourself then, yer moaning old b**ger" Well I am to cooking, what Genghis Khan was to the tourist industry so I doubt that will happen. However if some geriatric entrepreneur decides to open a Bread Pudding cafe please let me know, and I will do my best to be the first customer on the doorstep!
PS I will willingly pay extra for the custard!!
 
There are 6 of us but none of the lads will touch it. Me Lady and myself only, thats why I can understand why Bread goes so quick ???
 
I know I'm getting boring now - but just one last great delicacy of my life before I go.
Is there anybody there who sailed with the Grey Funnel Line? Well it's more commonly known as the RN! The food on the lower decks was bl***dy awful, at least I always considered it to be so, but there was one dish that I loved and still eat after all these years. To all on board it was crudely known as 'Sh*t on a Raft' which was kidney cooked in a thick brown gravy, and served up on a thick slice of toast. Now for sure, if i can cook it now, then there wasn't a lot the cooks on board could do then to spoil it, so maybe that is why it always turned out the tastiest dish we had.
What has always intrigued me is there a posh name for such a dish?
 
Alf. Rice and Nutmeg, my gran used to do it for me in the oven at the side of the open fireplace. Another was Spotted Dick but l only knew it as steamed pudding years ago.
Oh for those happy days.
 
I still make egg custard, sprinkled liberally with grated nutmeg.

How about bread and butter pud O0
 
I can remember when I was a little kid, living in Vauxhall, my Mom would send me up to the corner bakery for a Milk Loaf and a quarter pound of Pork Drippin and it had all the dark jelly on the bottom. She would cut me a thick crusty slice of the bread and spread it thick with that drippin, BOY!! was that good. But now we know that stuff will blockup your veins and raise your Cholesterol levels which is a NO!  NO!.

:knuppel2: :knuppel2: :knuppel2:

Have a nice day anyway, Wally.
 
I still make rice pudding and bread and butter pudding in the winter.
When our son was at University and they had a pot luck dinner he would take dessert. He would talk bananas and make custard when he was there. It was quite a hit as no one else knew how to make custard and they were surprised he did. :)
 
My mouths watering just reading this page. I used to only like the corners of the bread pudding all burnt.
My mom used to make cornish pasties but she put tinned cornbeef in instead of meat and mixed it with onions and potato's and made the pastry with cookeen not marg and they were lovely all the neighbours got some.
I tryed to impress my boyfriend by making some when I invited him for tea, I thought I would go one better and put tinned pea's in. When he cut them open all the filling was green. I never lived it down it was a standing joke for years.
Mom also used to make some mock cream with cornflour and marg I cant remember how she did it but I used to take a jug of it to our school parties, do you remember , when we had to take a spoon and plate with our names on and we all had to take something for the party.
 
The rice pudding l now get comes in a tin " health eating " and whereas a normal tin of rice costs about 15 p, " health eating " costs 45 p . l wonder why ?????
If its good for you then its another way of making money.
l dont have much choice in having to buy "Healthy Eating".
 
I still make my own with Pudding Rice it lasts for ages, you don't get the skin out of a tin. :)
 
Ger22van, I think it's a racket having to pay extra for these "healthy" labels. I would think
in the case of Rice Pudding, it would be made with Skimmed Milk rather than full Milk or
1%, that's all. I like the Ambroisa Rice Pudding in tins on occasion but certainly make my own often remembering the recipe that we used at School in Cookery classes or Domestic Science as we called it.
 
A quick rememberance about the Steamed Puddings that we had in the l940's and l950's. I can remember my Mom making them. She used a standard batter recipe from her Cook Book which I now have. She would use a basin that most of us are familiar with, line it with greaseproof paper which was tied at the top with string after everything was inside. Mom put different things in the bottom before the batter went in. I can remember marmade even, but usually it was some kind of jam or fruit mixture.. The basin would be put on the stove in a large saucepan of water and steamed for a few hours on a very low light. The result was a tender golden, almost cakelike in appearance, pudding. We always had Bird's custard with these and they were so delicious. I think some people called them Suet Puddings.

By the way, Speaky our rice pudding dish was the much chipped blue and white enamel
one of which you speak. I can still picture it now in the cupboard awaiting use for years and years.
 
Jenn, I use 1% skimmed milk for rice pudding and what ever rice I have, although the very small rice which I think is the Ambrosia rice is the best and creamier.

Steamed puddings - the suet pudding does actually have suet added where as the steamed sponge pudding which it sounds as though your mom made doesn't.

Can't beat them but most of us do things for convenience now. :(
 
Yes, Sakura, you are right about the steamed and suet puddings. The butcher used to give you a huge piece of suet when you bought your Sunday roast and any leftovers after cooking the roast was used for puddings. I am thinking now that Mom probably made the steamed puddings more often. You're right though those routines of making such puddings, etc. where not used as much when convenience packaged puddings came in although I have met some ladies in their 80's who simply won't "cheat" and still make things the way they always have. My Mother welcomed most of the new foods that came out in the mid to late l950's onwards. She was working then but always managed to have a cooked mea ready in no time. The first new grocery dessert item that I remember Mom trying was Royal Lemon Merangue Pie. So new and different back then :smitten:

Speaking of older practices in the kitchen...this time of year you can see everything you would ever need for canning and freezing food in the supermarkets here. The Fruit Departments have lots of case lot sales for Peaches, Beans, Tomatoes, etc. for canning and freezing, so people must still be putting food "down".
 
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