Ah hello, you've caught me having five minutes.
I'm about to start making bacon and onion Roly Poly Pudding. It's a cheap, savoury pudding
and ideal for the servants hall at Audley End House. And it's the kind of dish that
I grew up eating.
It's easy, you just put it in a pot and leave it at the back of the range. For this recipe
you will need:
Flour, beef suet, a generous pinch of salt, mushrooms, bacon, a small onion, some cold
water and lard for frying.
First a simple, robust pastry that is easy to make without any fuss.
Mix the flour, with the suet and add a good pinch of salt.
Then add water, a little at a time, to make a stiff but not too sticky paste.
Then set it aside somewhere cool.
Now it is time for the filling. You can put almost anything in. Sausage meat stuffing
filling is really nice.
Mary-Anne has already prepared my ingredients. She's chopped the mushrooms, the bacon and
the onions.
So I'll just mix them up.
Roll out the pastry into a rectangle - make sure you use plenty of flour to stop it from
sticking.
Make sure that it is smaller than the width of your pan by a couple of inches.
It doesn't matter how it looks, as this is for the servants. But I will make sure there's
plenty of filling.
Spread it out, but not quite to the edges.
Roll up the pudding tightly. It's useful to have a bowl of water handy as you can use
the water to seal the edges.
As with all puddings cooked in a cloth the wrapping is very important. Make sure for
this one you put plenty of flour on the cloth. Naturally, this is a savoury Roly Poly Pudding,
but you could use fruit puree or jam.
Some people call this shirt sleeve pudding because they make it in old shirt sleeves.
I've even heard people call it dead mans leg.
Now the pudding needs to go into a pan of boiling water.
Put the pudding in a pan of boiling water and leave it there for about an hour and a
half. It doesn't matter if it's a little longer than that.
Just make sure it's kept at a rolling boil.
You could serve the pudding hot straight away. But here at Audley End House we servants like
it fried.
So, I've let this cool and now it's time to unwrap it.
And now I am going to fry it.
Fry each slice lightly on both sides. You can fry it in butter or for a really delicious
taste use lard. Mmmm, smells divine.
And there you have it. Roly poly pudding.
Mmm.