Stand by for serious cholesterol food. This is not for Catspaw. The point about this is that you do not cook it often, or eat a lot of it.Dessert - Sussex Pond Pudding
You will need to find sources of suet (that Ex-pat shop has the vegetable sort), and soft brown sugar (fine grained with a fudgey taste and a tendency to stick together - muscovado is probably too strong a flavour, but its up to you). Also an unwaxed or organic lemon.
Ingredients (for a 1 and a half pint pudding basin)
Crust
8 oz self raising flour (or plain with baking powder)
4 oz shredded suet
(roughly equal volumes)
cold waterFilling
one lemon
soft brown sugar
butter, cut while chilled into small cubes
(The quantities depend on the basin)
Method
Butter the basin thinly (you don't need any more fat than you can help). Sift the flour into a bowl, add the suet and mix lightly. Sprinkle in a little water and blend, adding more water until you have a smooth elastic dough that leaves the bowl clean (rather like a biscuit (USA) or scone texture). Leave it for five minutes. Roll it out on a floured board to about half an inch thick and a rough circle. Cut out a quarter, and use the large part to line the basin. Then layer butter and brown sugar in the hollow about an inch thick. Prick the lemon fiercely with a fork and put it in the hollow. Continue to layer butter and sugar until within half an inch of the top. Cover with the remaining pastry, damping and pinching the edges together to seal it. Pleat a double sheet of foil in the centre and use to cover the pudding and tie it on with string below the top of the pudding basin. Steam, either by putting it on a trivet in a large pan of water, or by putting in a steamer over boiling water for 4 hours (I may get back to you on this). Make sure the pan does not boil dry. Turn out on a dish which will hold the juices. Serve at the table, cutting into the pudding, and forming the dark pond of the name. It is very rich, and helpings need to be small. You could serve it with cream (!) or ice-cream, or fromage frais. Not traditional, but I think it needs something to balance the flavour.
Penny