Puddings

I made some great desserts for yesterday's Christmas Day lunch. Ottolenghi's chocolate krantzcakes. White chocolate pecan squares, courtesy of the Magnolia Bakery cookery book. Nutella cheesecake, thank you Nigella Lawson.  Diabetic friendly coffee and cinnamon mini cheesecakes. All fab stuff, and it all went down about as well as the roasted root vegetables, roasted potatoes, blanched green bean salad, Ottolenghi's sweet houmous (that isn't what it's called but that is sure as hell what it tastes like and it is fabulous), my Mum's whisky poached salmon and my sister's multicoloured mixed salad. Which is to say, it all added up to a pretty memorable meal.  It was fabulous and I'm sad it's over except that most of the leftovers stayed with us which means we get to eat more of it for the next 4 or 5 dinners. Yay. But on Sunday I have friends coming for lunch and need to create a lunch that captures the post Christmas vibe. It's weird, this. As we all know, the period between Xmas and New Year is like a bubble, which most people spend at the sales, or gorging on Roses chocolates and leftover turkey, or going on long walks wrapped up in their new Timberland fleeces which were Xmas presents from relatives (though I passed a man on the canal walk near my house who ran past me wearing a bottle green Ralph Lauren two piece sweatsuit with horses and polo players emblazoned on the chest and thighs, and though it made a refreshing difference from Timberland, it was not a good look. Not for any age, or any guy). So, back to the lunch. It can't be too heavy as Xmas lunches and Roses chocolates have a way of sitting inside you for days, especially if, like us, you are still eating the leftovers. On the other hand, by midway to New Year, which is when my friends are coming over, most people have spent themselves at the sales and are feeling the cold, not to mention the onset of New Year depression that is associated with the gloomy, looming prospect of a return to work in the company of several hundred thousand equally pissed off, freezing cold, hungover, spent out commuters. So it needs to be comforting. And comfort, to me, is pudding. If I'm not well it's soup. But if it's after Xmas it's pudding. I spend some hours looking through my cookery books and surfing the web for puddings and decide that comfort also goes with the classics. So. It's going to be an apple and almond crumble, redolent with cinnamon and cloves. And it will be a dark chocolate pudding, bubbling with muscovado sugar. And a homemade custard, using vanilla pods that drive me nuts because contrary to the ease that chefs like Gordon Ramsay seem to display when scraping the seeds out, it takes me ages and they stick to my fingers or fall on the floor. Nightmare. But I will do it anyway because it makes me feel really smug when I serve the custard. And all this will be made on the day, not the day before, because the smell of these puddings is as evocative of comfort as the eating of them. In fact eating them without the memorable experience of walking into a kitchen rich with the aroma of baking puddings is only half the experience. And after we have eaten these puddings (after my main course of fried homemade fishfingers made of halibut and coated in matza meal, with homemade sourdough bread) we will climb into our wellies, and pitch out into the freezing cold, with invisible glows all around us, like those Ready Brek advertisements. Because that is what puddings do to you in Winter. They make you feel really warm, and really loved, and ready for just about anything. Even a commute on the Northern line with a carriagefull of smelly strangers.