Steamed Bread Pudding with Balsamic Mango~Berry Reduction

I sneak kitchen equipment into the apartment.

I hide it away, then take it out and use it, feigning innocence and claiming we always had it when Tom asks "Where did that come from?" We really don't have the extra room in our kitchen for more toys but I can't help myself. He's onto me though, and knowing this I decided to fess up about the new steamed pudding mold. His reaction (to my total shock) was: "Oh cool, we can make bread pudding."

Joy!

And so I did...

My first steamed pudding. (*sniffle*...I'm so proud) definitely not my last. This was really good- I didn't expect that, actually I didn't expect it to turn out at all. The shape didn't hold as expected but I think that might be because this "pudding" had more of a custard consistency rather than a cake consistency. I'll also admit that in my excitement I unmolded before it had a chance to cool and set a bit. That's fine though, it still tasted very good.

Blaine, who often leaves great suggestions for me in the comments section of my entries, left a recipe earlier last week that I decided to try with this mold. Thanks Blaine! Modifying the recipe slightly, I pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees, then removed the crusts from 2 loaves of Italian bread (Blaine uses sourdough) and cubed it. Placing the cubes in an oven safe dish I toasted the cubes until they were dry and just starting to brown. In a large bowl I whisked 3 cups of heavy cream together with 9 egg-yolks, 1-1/2 cups of real dark amber maple syrup, a pinch of salt, a capful of vanilla extract, a little less than a capful of lemon extract, a healthy dash of cinnamon, fresh grated nutmeg and last but not least, 1 heaping tablespoon (with liquid) of currants that were soaked in some very potent white rum. By this time I had taken the bread cubes out of the oven, and decided to let them cool because I was afraid of cooking the egg if I added them to the wet ingredients too soon. So, while the cubed bread cooled I set a pot on the stove and added a rack for the pudding mold to sit on (this allows water to flow under the mold while cooking). I buttered the mold (you can't really tell but I did), to allow for easy pudding removal later, then sprinkled the inside of the buttered mold with nutmeg. Placing the now cooled bread cubes into the wet ingredients I let them soak for a while before pouring the whole mixture into the mold. I got a little nervous here, thinking that there wasn't enough liquid, I added some whole milk (I was out of heavy cream) just to cover the exposed cubes then capped the whole thing and put it in it's bath. Oops! Almost forgot to mention that I had let the "bath" water come to a boil before lowering the heat to a simmer and putting the mold in. I had read a lot of conflicting information about how long to steam for so I averaged it out to 2 hours.

While the pudding was slowly simmering on the stove it took everything I had not to keep lifting the lid off the pot and trying to peek at what was going on, so I decided to make a sauce. I originally wanted to make a vanilla bourbon sauce, but after realizing I had some fruit that needed to be used (and fast) I decided on a fruit sauce. Into a pot went 1 pint of strawberries, a handful of blueberries, 2 mangoes, (Paul cooked some unique and interesting dishes with mangoes last week as well as gave out some good tips and information on them) about 2 cups of water, 1/3 cup of sugar and the juice of 1 key lime. I boiled this until the fruit had become "bloated" (hmm...I think water-logged sounds better), then removed it from the heat and pushed the whole thing through a fine strainer. I discarded the fibers, and poured the strained liquid back into the pot and added 1 capful of vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon of Tawny Port, 2 tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar. I boiled this down until it was a thick tasty syrup, then removed it from the heat and let it cool.

I had been periodically checking the water while the pudding was steaming to make sure that the water was halfway up the sides of the mold at all times. If it wasn't then I added some more boiling water to the pot from a tea kettle I was boiling water in for this purpose. You can imagine my surprise when I lifted the lid off the pot and found that the mold had flipped it's lid! I guessed at this point the pudding was done, so I turned off the heat, used a turkey baster to bail out enough water to get my hands and 2 potholders in there and removed the mold. I let it cool for about 20 minutes (I should have waited an hour at least) then unmolded it onto my boring white plate. I "sauced" it with the balsamic mango~berry reduction and then for lack of better decoration I used the peel of a lime to add some more color. I'm not crazy about the photo I used, lack of better planning on my part really, I should do what Blue does and sketch my idea's for plating.

Final Thoughts: I served it a little prematurely as it still wasn't set completely, next time I will wait, that should ease the slicing a bit. I thought it was delicious, but in all honestly I only had a few bites. The berry sauce was a nice tart but not too tart contrast to the sweet and eggy taste and texture of the pudding. I would use a bit less maple syrup next time, but this is a preference issue, I just don't like sweet sweet things, although this wasn't overly sweet, I would just prefer it less sweet (does that makes sense?). Otherwise it was damn tasty just the way it was. In terms of fun, this cooking project was off the scale, it was a lot of fun. A definite keeper and now in my "make this recipe again pile".

Written by Deb on February 16, 2003 02:49 AM