welcome friends welcome back to Sunday morning in the old cook book show in
last week's episode we visited the Museum of Dufferin to speak with their
curator and look at old cookbooks and recipes throughout Canadian history
in that time we decided on three recipes that we're going to make and so the
first one we're going to make is a hand written recipe for steamed carrot pudding now
I've never made this recipe but it is a recipe that's very familiar to me
because I think if you grew up in the 60s and 70s your grandparents probably
would have made this two or three times throughout the year for different family
functions and I know that it's probably a recipe Julie's familiar with as
well so recipes really easy it's a cup of everything except for the baking soda
and that's just a teaspoon so I've thrown the baking soda in with the flour
for no real reason other than that's just habit I'm going to put the flour in
the bowl a cup of white sugar that goes in the bowl as well this is a cup of
currants and currants are a dried Corinthian raisin and to that we're
going to add raisins one cup the currants or Corinthian raisins are quite
a bit smaller than the other raisins that you're going to get at the grocery
store so there's a currant and that's a regular raisin they're much smaller and
they have slightly different flavors quite nice on its own but inside of
something else I don't know that you would notice the flavor difference but
make sure you get Corinthian raisins or dried currants they're not the same as
red or black currants completely different things these are dried grapes
definitely dry grapes and next in is this this is beef suet and so this is
ground from the fat that hangs inside the cow close to the liver and the
kidneys it's not associated with the meat of the cow and you should be able
to get this at pretty much any really good butcher and even most grocery
stores here carry it just ask at the meat counter they've probably got it
frozen somewhere and so I'm just gonna give this a stir
to get it started before we move on to the next thing which is a cup of grated
carrots and a cup of grated potato so let's start with the potato let's see
let's do this one okay this is gonna make a mess I should have put something
down first okay and on to the carrots there's no liquid in this recipe other
than what's in the potato and the carrot um there's no egg in this recipe I've
been racking my brain trying to remember what my grandmother did and I cannot for
the life of me remember exactly what she put in hers
and I needed to find that recipe so carrot potato into the mix get it all in
there now we'll just mix that up I'm gonna say yes it's mixed at some point I
did get in there with my hands and and mixed it a little bit more the potatoes
have given off a lot of liquid into the mixture and brought it together a little
bit so I've got a bowl here that I have buttered inside really greased it a lot
and so I'm going to put the pudding in here although it is quite a dry mix
still put it in and the bowl is probably too big but I wasn't sure what size to
use maybe I'll use a smaller one this is probably the right size let me butter
this one and then we'll come right back and get this done okay back with a bowl
it's buttered I think this is a better size so we'll transfer over there we go
so this is to me kind of interesting because this this recipe is handwritten
and a lot of hand written recipes I know even my own handwritten recipes leave a
lot out there just shorthand they're meant as a reminder of the steps and so
they leave a lot of steps out and they may even leave ingredients out because
the person who wrote it just knew what they were doing and the recipe isn't for
anyone else it was for themselves just as a reminder so even when you have the
recipe it's not gonna taste like what the person who wrote the recipe made
it's just not so the next thing we need to do is put a parchment paper disc on
the top of this so I've got a piece of parchment paper you fold it over once
and then you fold it over twice and so now I have a rectangle and so I fold the
rectangle into essentially a cone or a triangle let me just put it down now
that I've got this cone or triangle I'm gonna fold it one more time to make an
even tighter cone or triangle I've got a video on this I'll link to the video if
you if you want to get a really close ID picture on what's happening and then I
just kind of hold it over the bowl like this roughly find the center it doesn't
have to be exactly the center and then go out there take a pair of scissors and
then when you open it up you pretty much have a disc and the disc will be a
little bit larger than the bowl the next thing I'm going to do crumple it out and
then open it up and pull it up again and this
crumpling and if you do it a couple of times the crumpling and then you it
makes it much more pliable and easier to push into the bowl and so now I push
that parchment paper down onto the top of the pudding and the sides of the
parchment paper that we're a little bit too large they will come up to the sides
of the bowl just a little bit not a whole lot don't overthink it you don't
have to get it on there perfect it just has to sort of be on there because the
next thing that goes on is some tin foil and that goes on the outside and it
doesn't matter one bit which side is facing up and which side is facing down
now this next step is a little bit more difficult you need some twine and I am
in no way going to make this look effortless I'm gonna make you look like
a rockstar so around just like that and do like a
bring that through maybe three or four times so that when you pull it tight it
will cinch and not let off right away and then tie one more knot now if you're
really good which I'm not you would then tie this in a bit of a loop like that
and make a handle
now you've got a handle for your pudding now mine's a little unbalanced it's a
little bit skewed to one side there's no prize for doing it quickly take your
time and and just play with it and if you can't do it don't worry about
it you don't have to you could take an elastic band and put it around the top
as long as you sort of hold this on as tightly as possible it doesn't have to
be super tight so I've got a big pot of water here going it's on sort of a low
boil with the lid off it doesn't look like it's simmering very much but as
soon as I put the lid on it will come back there's a rack in the bottom but
you don't absolutely have to have a rack sit your pudding on top and sort of
twist the string on top like that just so it's easier at the end to be able to
grab the handle and pull it out of the water bath put the lid on and the recipe
says to go for an hour and a half or longer so I'm gonna put it on for
probably two hours the sauce is a little weird because it's not really a caramel
sauce we start out with some butter put that into a pot along with a little bit
of flour and some sugar grate in a little bit of nutmeg now the proportions
given for the sugar and the nutmeg are to taste and I'm not really sure what
that means so I'm just kind of playing it by ear
got that in now I'm supposed to mash this together mix it all into a paste
this is a very classical French method for thickening a sauce mixing flour into
butter to make a paste and then you typically add that paste to the sauce
and it thickens it and it gives it a really nice glossy feel in this instance
though I'm supposed to pour enough boiling water over top that will allow
it to cook so I pour in some water doesn't say how much so I'm gonna start
with that much give it a stir and then I'm gonna bring it over to the stove top
sort of a medium low heat I'm going to cook and stir it until it thickens into
a nice sauce and this isn't the kind of sauce that's going to get any sort of
caramel color or flavor you're just looking for it to thicken
it's time for pudding okay here we go I'm ready it's like this little
mysterious thing that has arrived to this so um let's see I feel like there
needs to be some kind of formal aha you know how you this ceremony are the
turkey someone pipes in the head yeah I feel like it needs a song or something i
I'm not going to sing though okay so we've just had this golden barley
lentil soup which was amazing and I am super full but I can find space always
finding space for pudding so take the tinfoil ah hmm
and um I'm just gonna cheer please Duke ha
Oh puddin look at that it's all reason eating goodie
okay well let's give it a go and see uh I don't think it's supposed to be like
that it's a little mushy okay
I'm not sold haha okay so this is not how I remember my grandmother's this is
this no this isn't how I remember it either but that being said in our
defense we've never made this before I've never made this before I've had it
before because it's a carrot pudding is something that my grandmother made yeah
and I heard your aunts and your mom talking about it at Christmas I was just
gonna throw that down that they couldn't get your grandmother's recipe to work
yeah so the fact that this so there's a secret there's a secret that wasn't
written down because I can't like do you think liquid got underneath the tinfoil
is that what happened cuz I don't remember
tinfoil being part of the measure but um it it might have gotten a little liquid
underneath but I tightened it pretty tight I wrapped it really tight it's not
quite right and there's so that's where the so we're gonna add some sauce to it
yeah so here's the sauce okay but okay the flavors are there it's it tastes
wonderful everything is to join try some sauce everything is cooked like the all
the parts are cooked but there's just too yeah sure why not what's the worst
thing that happens um it's not like it's not cooked it's just too too mushy
too mushy so it could have been my wrapping technique was off what okay I
didn't see the recipe what were the variables and the recipe like was it
there a vagueness to it I mean there often is could we have added too much of
the wet ingredients like too much fruit was the fruit everything was a cup
except for the soda which was a teaspoon there were no there were no directions
as to what to do or how to make it rather than steam it for at least an
hour and a half so I think the flavors there but there's we're definitely
missing something okay so clearly we need some guidance if you are in the nor
if you made this all the time or you've made this before even just once
successfully and you have some advice for us please cuz it tastes great but it
does have an odd but like I mentioned earlier right it's not quite right here
but like I mentioned earlier the secrets weren't written down the secrets are
never written down so I need to I need to look at a whole bunch of other
recipes for this and then we'll come back in a few weeks with something else
so there are two thoughts though one the sauce didn't make it any better
no no and two could it be that our perception of what it's supposed to be
could be completely wrong right could be completely already well and the other
thing is the person who wrote this cookbook could have been a terrible cook
we don't know you know everybody's got that person in their family that wants
to keep the recipe and thinks that they're great and they read everything
but they're not that good and I will not say out loud who it is in our family
because that is not nice no it's not it's not it's not a nice thought but
that is part that that can be part of it too but it's true they could have been a
flawed recipe right from the beginning so more research and we'll do a do-over
and I want to thank the Museum of deferent for helping us with this recipe
I mean they were a great resource to get this going
yeah and it could just be us all rhyme it could be me I will completely own
that thanks for stopping by see you guys soon there's no hero shot there is no
hero shot for that
you