Brown Betty

This Brown Betty is a delightful, warming apple pudding and easy to make. The combined taste of the cloves, apple, treacle and sherry is hard to beat and they combine to make a smell make that's heavenly. It’s a dish that can be eaten hot or cold, my preference is for hot, but it’s unlikely I’d turn down a helping of it cold - the flavours seem to grow that longer it's kept.

In our house this was a standard Sunday pudding, my father developed a liking for it cold, cooked in a charlotte tin and turned out, which seems like an unecessary complication. With lots of cream. You could liken it to an Apple Charlotte, a deconstructed one that tastes much better. Unlike a Charlotte that uses melted butter brushed into place, the dobs of butter sit alongside the morsels of apple and make their own way through the crumbs while it cooks. You might imagine, reading the recipe, that it might seem to be a bit dry: it isn’t.

When I was trying to remember the recipe I read quite a lot of American versions, which aren't the same and seem more complicated. I found a reference to 'old fashioned Brown Betty' in a Pan Dowdy recipe, and perhaps our family version takes its molasses (black treacle) from there. You can see that here, and I'll include the version that my father wrote, although I never saw him make it… I've written it out the way I remember making it with my mother.

The quantities are a guide - you’ll probably manage to get everything in the dish. Give it a go. And use Bramley apples if you can.

Dad's write up

Brown Betty Recipe

Ingredients

2lb/scant 1kg apples

1/2lb/250g fresh breadcrumbs

¼ kb/125g unsalted butter

Brown sugar - more than a cupful

Black treacle - about two tablespoons

½ mug/1 wine glass sherry

Several pinches of ground cloves

Pinch Cinnamon 

Method

Set the oven to 170C/Gas Mark 3/325F

Use a deep pie dish

• Peel and core the apple and cut it into bit sized piece

• Generously butter around a deep pie dish

• Scatter a layer of breadcrumbs, then some apple pieces, pinches of butter alongside dustings of cloves and some cinnamon, sprinkle over with sugar and repeat until you’ve used up all the apple - then add one last layer of breadcrumbs

• Drizzle the treacle over in a random way - if you warm the spoon in boiling water and then dry it the treacle will flow more easily

• Pour the sherry over, covering as much as possible 

• Bake for around an hour, or until the apple is completely cooked (test with a skewer)

The cooked dish has a lovely crust - eat with cream, yoghurt, ice cream, or on its own.

stock from double chicken roast + chicken

At the end of a wet Sunday we shared supper with Alex and Derek. We walked our food round to theirs, and had two roast chickens. Alex had made roasties to the usual high quality, I had thrown some cooked new potatoes around in pounded garlic with paprika, lemon and olive oil and let them cook for 15m on the shelf above my chicken. I had carefully removed the drumsticks and set them aside with another set of legs, remaining from the chicken we'd bought to eat just the breast meat. After all, the breast meat being sold on its own cost the same price as a whole chicken. So I roasted a chicken without its drumsticks, adding the chicken wings from the other bird. It was a mismatched puzzle of a roast chicken... because Derek really likes chicken wings, and that way there were six to choose from (remember, they were also roasting a chicken. Fascinating.

The upshot, after the meal was eaten and we waddled home, was that I ended up with three chicken carcasses. There were a couple of legs missing, and a couple of drumsticks (being made into stew soon), but it was still a whole heap of bones. So into the large pot went the bones with a bayleaf, a small bunch of parsley, an onion studded with four whole cloves, a leek, several cloves of garlic, peppercorns, a carrot and some mixed herbs. On top of that went about three litres of water, and then it was all boiled together for around an hour. The result? Stock, lovely gelatinous stock.

Soup follows