Bread and Jam for Francis

I went to a BBQ at my friends’ Steve and Francis on Saturday, and brought dessert. Steve and Fran are English, and there were going to be a lot of Brits in attendance. It was hot, and I didn’t want to turn on my oven, so I found a couple of recipes for summer berry pudding, which is a traditional English dessert: berries cooked with some water and sugar which is then dumped into a bowl or loaf pan that’s lined with bread. It’s then weighted and chilled for 4+ hours. This is what I did:

1 cup water
½ cup sugar
2 cardamom pods
Several shakes of ground cinnamon because I can’t find my cinnamon sticks
Splash of white wine

Boiled that until the sugar dissolved and let it steep while I went to our overpriced gourmet shop on 45th Street to get berries. I procured:

2 pints of blueberries
4 little flats of organic raspberries that, upon opening, were covered in mold. Actual yield: about fifteen raspberries.
2 pints of Driscoll strawberries (they’re durable!)
1 tiny bag of frozen organic berries for $6.!@#@#$95
Loaf of white bread (a whole loaf. Good bread.)

Total cost: $32.17

Picked over the blueberries, cursed the raspberries, hulled and sliced the strawberries, washed the lot and dumped it into the pot. Brought to a boil and then reduced to a simmer and cooked for about fifteen minutes. Mashed the blueberries down a bit and spent an entertaining fifteen minutes hunting in hot jelly for the cardamom pods. Added some Chamborg. Strained the mixture into a bowl.

Lined an 8 cup casserole with clingfilm. Sliced the bread, buttered some of them, and lined the casserole. Dumped in the berries. Sealed the top with bread. Covered with more clingfilm, put a plate on top and a pot lid on the plate. Surveyed the remaining, somewhat bloody-looking berry puree and ate a spoonful of it while deciding what to do with it.

Here is the thing that I always forget to do that is the most important thing in cooking:

Taste the damn food. Summer berry pudding is all about the berries, and it’s June: blueberries and raspberries aren’t really in yet. Driscoll strawberries are barely fruit at all. The puree could charitably be called tart; “sour” would probably be more accurate. No trace of the cardamom or cinnamon.

So I dumped a load of sugar into the pot of strained juice, boiled that for a while, took the top layer of bread off and ladled some of the berry syrup in. Resealed it and put it back in the fridge.

Upon unmolding it at the Q, I discovered a few things.

1. I’d add at least a cup more of juice. The bread still looked like bread, albeit attractively swirled with crimson.
2. The plate was too big for the top of the casserole. It needs to fit inside in order to really smash it down.
3. British people like dessert that most Americans would describe as “underwhelming.”

It simply wasn’t sweet enough. Although my hostess assured me that summer berry pudding is supposed to taste like berries, berries are, when they’re good, sweet. There was a good enough of a fruit flavor, but basically, I had just served people mediocre compote on white bread. It was kind of embarrassing. Also, it needed a big clump of cream like nobody’s business. And possibly salt.

Recommendations to fix:

1. Make in July like you’re supposed to.
2. Maybe cook berries in orange juice, or mix of oj and water.
3. Let the whole spices sit in the mix for at least an hour.
4. Open raspberries before buying.
5. Maybe use a sweeter bread, like challah or even Portuguese bread.

I don’t have pictures because I don’t have my camera yet. It was supposed to look like this:

It didn’t.