Clafoutis aux prunes - Limousin batter pudding with plums. Gluten-free version.

A clafoutis [pr. klafuti] is essentially a fruit tart without pastry, which comes from the Limousin region of France, famous for its enamels, porcelain and beef cattle. There are other similar recipe regional desserts and probably as equally well-known is the far breton, which as Brittany is just around the corner from us here, I will be posting soon.

Although often made with cherries, a clafoutis can be made with a wide variety of fruits and also as a savoury dish. In the following recipe I'll be making a gluten-free version with some 'quetsch', which are large damson-like plums, these are from a friend's tree.  I will also shortly be posting a savoury version of this recipe and one for small individual tarts. I will be making the latter with all purpose flour/plain flour but which obviously could also be made by following my gluten free recipe below or with your own favourite gluten-free choice for the flour.

I have eaten clafoutis on a couple of occasions in restaurants and have found it too sweet and heavy. That is because it is often made with non-traditional sweet cherries, in my opinion it needs the 'bite' that tart varieties of fruit can give. I also think it needs a really good whisking up when the milk goes in and I also believe a fine, light flour such as arrowroot helps to lift the batter. In addition, I thought the mix needed some 'fat' with which to carry the the flavours, although using raw Normandie dairy, helps a lot.

Ingredients

Plum halves to cover the bottom of dish

80g (3oz) of potato flour

20g ( ¾oz) of arrowroot

80g (3oz) of sugar

300ml of milk (I use raw local creamy milk from Normandy cows)
2 eggs (or 4 bantam eggs)

1 table spoon of melted coconut oil or butter

50g (1 ¾oz) of ground almonds

Optional - Rapadura (raw cane sugar) for sprinkling on the plums.

Cooking times

30 to 40 mins or until the top is well set and golden at 180°C or 350°F

Method

Butter your pie dish generously and place upon it, cut face downwards, the halves of plums with the stone removed. Use enough plums to cover the dish, I'm using a 25cm or 10" square, with an internal depth of 25mm or 1". 

(Optional) Sprinkle with a little rapadura (raw cane sugar). This will give a little caramel touch to the plums, which are quite tart and I'm using less sugar in the batter than would be used traditionally.

Place all your dry ingredients in a bowl but keep back a little sugar for sprinkling on the clafoutis when it comes from the oven. Mix well.

Add the melted coconut oil (or butter) and mix again.

Make a well in the mix and add eggs, incorporate by bringing the dry ingredients gradually in towards the centre. You can do this by hand or with a beater if you wish. Beat well to obtain a smooth paste.

Add milk slowly, whisking all the time to obtain an homogeneous batter. This is a thin batter - do not worry!

Pour over plums and put immediately into the oven

When cooked the clafoutis will 'spring back' when you touch it with your finger tips and it will also be a beautiful golden brown.






The clafoutis can then be sprinkled with the remaining sugar just to give it a little crunch and extra texture. You can eat it straight from the oven, but I usually have some left over for the next day. I just store it on the window ledge, I do not have a fridge and I think it might go soggy if you were to put it in one, so a pantry or cool place would be best.

Hope you enjoy this dish, it is simple and yet an ode to the fine organic ingredients and succulent seasonal fruit.


Please feel free to comment, ask questions and share.

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from an old farmhouse in Normandie,

Sue

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© 2014 Sue Cross

Traditional Victorian Organic Plum Pudding made now for next Christmas. Recipe includes gluten-free version.

The roots of the plum pudding go back into the mists of time to a Celtic end-of-year celebration dish called 'plum porridge'. Like many such dishes the exact ingredients were handed down verbally but it was essentially a mix of beef and/or veal, dried fruits (in particular prunes), oats, spices and alcohol. It was furthermore, a way of preserving and providing meat over the harsh Winter. At some point in its history, this dish became enclosed in a pastry case, which made it even easier to preserve and led the way forward to another Christmas delicacy, the Mince-Pie or Mincemeat tart. At some time in the 18th century the steamed plum pudding, which was of similar ingredients to the porridge, began to be served alongside it at the Christmas celebration. However, by the Victorian Era, the plum pudding we have come to know and love today, had completely taken over the festive board.

 

Pies, puddings, pigs' heads and the decking of the halls

These rich porridge, pastry and pudding dishes had great economic and social significance and were, with the boar's head, the centrepiece of elaborate feasts hosted by landlords to their tenants to see them over the 'hungry gap'. This period was the old Christmastide before the Protestant work ethic took hold and it stretched between the Winter Solstice and the Feast  of Lights or Candlemas on the 2nd of February. The peasant farmer's stores would be dwindling, with most of his available food shared between his family and whatever remained of his livestock. 

The hymn 'Good King Wencelaus' would have resonated with the Victorian churchgoer, harking back to the Feast of Fools, a day which turned feudal hierarchies upside down. Cutting the Twelfth Night Cake or Galette de Rois, when a king and queen are chosen from the amongst guests, still remains today. The older significance presides in the British Army, where at Christmastime, the officers wait upon the men. 

The necessity to preserve meat and the rural workforce, has given us a rich pudding which will keep and mature for a whole year. I make my puddings a year in advance and am just about to make a new batch, one for the eve of Candlemas, which just happens to be Andy's Birthday and the rest for the coming Christmas. In December 2013 I also made a gluten-free one (pictured right) for my family.

The Recipe

'John Bull's Own' is a plum pudding recipe from the 1861 version of Mrs. Beeton's Household Management, I've made a few adjustments, in particular in my choice of dried fruits and the amount of sugar I use. If you are unaware of Isabella Beeton, she was and is the doyenne of English Cookery. In her short life she managed to produce a body of work which covered everything from how to find a wet nurse and cook artichokes to how to cure pip in poultry and set a broken leg. This was published in 1861 in her famous 'Book of Household Management', which was and for all I know, still is a favourite wedding gift. The last on one we gave as a present, was this first edition but presented on a cd-rom. The recipes in this book, made as they are from basic seasonal foodstuffs, are excellent for organic produce. 


The following ingredients were meant to make one huge round pudding which, in 1861, was to be steamed in a buttered and floured cloth hanging over a pan of water. However, I always divide the mixture into three to four various sized china puddings basins. I have also put the gluten-free alternatives below and please note there was no taste of coconut in the latter pudding.

 
1lb/450g of suet (I use melted raw butter),
1lb/450g raw cane sugar aka rapadura 
4lbs/1800g dried fruit (I use sultanas, prunes, figs, apricots, dates, candied peel (home-made see ) cherries (this year I used cranberries) plus hazelnuts and almonds.
½ lb/225g plain flour - or for gluten-free use ground almonds.
½ lb/225g bread-crumbs (we make a brioche) - or for gluten-free I use desiccated coconut with 1oz/28g white rice flour to make up the weight.
1 teaspoon of mixed spice ('mixed spice' is a traditional British pie, pudding, biscuit and cake blend, made from, ground coriander, cassia, ginger, nutmeg, caraway and cloves).
8 eggs (I weigh my eggs as they are all different sizes but a standard recipe egg weighs around 2oz/56g)
¼ pint/140ml of brandy ( I can get organic cognac here in France but last year I tried organic Calvados -- superb!).

The fruit and nuts can be macerated in the spirit for several hours or even overnight. This will plump up the dried fruit and also help to mix the brandy more evenly throughout the pudding. Note the amazing shape of the organic Calvados bottle, it also comes in the form of a sailing ship!

The ingredients are then mixed in the following order; flour, spice, sugar, fruit, bread-crumbs, butter, eggs. Then Mrs. Beeton, who probably had in mind a beefy-armed cook to do this work, suggests the mixture should be stirred "for 25 minutes". However as part of the mystique of the pudding is involved with making a wish whilst stirring, you can perhaps get as many of your guests, neighbours or whoever, to help you with this task!

You are now ready to butter the basins and cut and butter the papers, these should be shaped so as to allow enough room to make a pleat in the paper to allow the mixture to rise. Fill the moulds, again leaving enough space to allow for expansion. You will need a volume of 5¼ pints in total if you make the whole amount. Make three 'lids' for each bowl out of the buttered paper and tie each with string or twine. 

On the wood cooker, I steam for between 5 to 13 hours, depending on the size. This gives a deep rich colour and fragrance and likewise an excellent depth of flavour. With the pudding I made this Christmas in Scotland, my sister used a pressure cooker. Her tip is to cook it for the first  15 minutes at atmospheric pressure, this allows the pudding to rise. As every 10 minutes in a pressure cooker is equal to half an hour in a steamer, she decided to cook our 2lb/1kl pudding at pressure for an hour, I have to say it was delicious, even if slightly lighter in colour. 

We serve our pudding with raw crème fraîche or sweet white sauce and brandy butter, which is made from equal parts of raw sugar and raw butter and a dash of cognac. Before bringing the pudding to, or at the table, the pudding is 'flamed' in a tablespoon of heated brandy. To accompany it, we always chose Monbazillac, a 'noble rot' wine from the left banks of the Dordogne.



 Kept in a cool dry place this pudding, once cooked, will be ready for this year's Christmas 2014 celebrations but as modern houses often do not have a pantry or cold store, then it is often more sensible to remove the pudding from its bowl and papers and freeze it.

The charms of the old Christmastide desserts

 

As part and parcel of the  season of giving, the pudding was often filled with gifts, charms or small silver coins. Some of these were to tell fortunes, such as who would marry that year or make money but many were just to wish good luck. In France the Gallette des Rois contains china figures known as fèves (broad beans), this harks back to the Twelfth Night cake, which contains a dried pea and bean. Inviting friends, family and neighbours to partake of the Galette des Rois is still very popular in rural France, although the cake is more often bought than made at home. Once cut, it is passed around the guests and the ones who find the 2 fèves are pronounced king and queen of the feast and wear a gilded paper crown. Nowadays, these porcelain figures are usually representative of cartoon characters from the latest Christmas blockbuster but the older fèves are charming and highly collectable.

Now if you want to, sit back and watch my animated film of the making of John Bull's Own plum pudding. 

All the best for this new year and enjoy your pudding at Candlemas to celebrate the end of Christmastide and if it's possible to resist, keep some for Christmas! See you next time for the ancient recipe of Kitchels or God Cakes, another delicious Winter treat to keep out the cold! 

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© 2014 Sue Cross