SUNDAY LUNCH: IN THE PUDDING CLUB

In honour of my new book project, to be announced next week, Sunday lunch this week was that most classic of British dishes, the steak & kidney pudding.

Taking the advice of the good people at McKenna's Butchers on Theobald's Road, I used lamb kidneys rather than the more pungent Ox kidneys and, taking a tip that HP had gleaned from Martin Blunos, I also added a quarter teaspoon of turmeric to the pastry mix to add colour to the suet crust.

To the beef, I added a pouch of beef stock, some fresh thyme and for extra unctuousness, some of Fergus Henderson's Trotter Gear I had lingering in the freezer before layering the meat with sliced onions in the suet lined pudding basin.

It is a perfect dish for days like these and well worth the five (yep five) hours of steaming it took in a large pan sitting on an upturned bowl. We passed the time with the Sunday papers and a bottle of Young's Christmas Pudding beer.

The end result was very tasty indeed and we polished it off in short order. Although, despite looking like it would remain upright, the fact that the pudding began to decline gloriously like the sinking Graf Spee soon after being turned out, suggested that I may well have rolled the pastry out a tad on the thin side.

Still, with some mashed swede and sweet potato to mop up the juices that flooded out once the pudding was pierced, and some buttered greens it is a dish I may well be returning to before Winter is done.