Summer Pudding

February 6, 2001

The city where I now live, Christchurch, is situated on the Canterbury Plains and it is mighty flat around here. Wellington, my old home town is built on hills surrounding a harbour and there are plenty of landmarks so you can always find your way about. Here though, I have been known to drive about 15 kilometres just to get to a friend's place less than two kilometres away. Many of the streets look the same to me and I'm inclined to take a wrong turning then try to navigate back round the block to where I should be.

After nearly a year living here, I have managed to get lost less often and I have been able to venture out quite confidently lately, with a good prospect of arriving where I planned to be.

There are excellent market gardens close by and I have been doing the rounds and establishing favourites. I went to a berry farm the other day, looking for something for a barbecue dessert. Would I have the raspberries or the strawberries, the blueberries or the loganberries? I vacillated. The lady behind the counter put me out of my misery. "I've got just the thing for people like you," she grinned. She produced a container holding a great mixture of berries, topped with a few clusters of red currants. It looked just great in a crystal bowl with a sprinkling of icing sugar. Some plain vanilla ice cream was all that was needed to go with the scarlet berries.

Another delicious dessert to make when the berries are plentiful is summer pudding. It's a fairly simple dish but it looks good and tastes wonderful.

Summer Pudding

6-8 slices of white bread, crusts removed
750g of assorted berries - strawberries, raspberries, red currants, blueberries, loganberries, blackberries
1/4 cup water
half cup sugar
3 tablespoons rum (optional)

Lightly oil a pudding basin or other suitable container and line with the bread, making sure there are no gaps.

Place the fruit in a pan with the water and sugar and heat gently till the berries release their juices but stay reasonably whole. Remove from the heat and stir in the rum.

Pour into the bread-lined container, saving a little of the liquid. Top with the remaining bread. Cover with a suitable sized plate and a weight (an unopened can of food works well) and refrigerate.

To serve, loosen the pudding from the size of the bowl with a flexible metal spatula and turn the pudding onto a serving plate. If there are any patches where the berry juice hasn't penetrated, spoon over a little of the reserved liquid.

Serve with whipped cream or creme fraiche.