Daring Baker's Steamed English Pudding

This month’s challenge was a traditional steamed English Pudding. I was a little skeptical, but decided to push through, particularly since I skipped last month.

The challenge was hosted by Ester of The Lilac Kitchen, and she has the full post of information on her blog. The post needed to use suet or a suet replacement. Suet is fat from a cow or sheep, fat that surrounds the kidneys. Blech. So I opted to use Crisco, which worked fine. Esther also gave the option to make a suet pudding crust, or a steamed suet sponge pudding. I chose the suet crust, with a savory filling.

I cut and sauteed leeks in a little oil, sprinkled flour on the leeks, added vegetable broth, which made it a little gooey, based on this recipe here.

I also cooked a little veggie sausage in a dish, and added the sausage to the leeks.

First, I mixed the flour with the crisco, then added about 3/4 cup water to make the dough slightly sticky. On a floured surface I rolled the dough out, taking about a third of the dough for the lid of the pudding. When rolled out, I pieced the dough into a greased 1.4 liter pyrex dish. The dough was tearing a little bit, so it was a little like putting a puzzle together.

Once the dough was fitted into the dish, I spooned the filling into the dish. Then I placed the dough lid on the dish, pinching it closed. There was a lot more dough than filling, so I cut off excess, pinched the dough closed again.

I fitted a large stock pot with a steamer basket, my jerryrigging of a steamer. With water on the bottom, I set the pyrex bowl on top of the steamer basket, and steamed the pudding for about 3 hours. Since I am a magnet for disasters in the kitchen, the water in the steamer actually boiled dry, oops!

So, I let the pudding sit for a couple minutes, turned it out on a plate, and voila, dinner!