I have had half of last years Christmas pudding in the freezer all year. “Must eat that pudding sometime” I’d think each time it tumbled out. So here I was in December, thinking about Christmas lunch, wondering if it would be TOO bad to serve up half an elderly pudding? I decided that perhaps, all things considered, it might be. The reality is that I’m the only person in the family who really likes plum pudding, which is why there was probably half a pudding in the freezer in the first place. Did I really want to make another pudding only to add yet another half-pudding to the freezer? (I suppose at this rate, by Christmas 2015 I’d have a whole pudding in two bits!)
Then I spied a recipe in the Age for a Christmas Bombe. That sounds interesting- a mashup of pannetone, ice-cream, plum pudding and pavlova. Delicious or disgusting? It looked good in the picture.
So by Christmas morning, there was a pannetone-lined basin filled with plum-pudding icecream securely tucked away in Dad’s freezer (my freezer is too full of old puddings, you see….) ready for the great bombe-ing later in the day. The table was set, waiting for my guests.
So, first thing to get the pudding out of the bowl.
Sh*t! It won’t come out!!!
Oh yes it did. (Phew!)
Now the great smothering with meringue.
Someone can always be trusted to clean the bowl and lick the beaters. (In this case, my 85 year old father!)
Hey, this doesn’t look too bad.
Now, for the Great Flaming. I don’t have a kitchen blowtorch, but my stepson has two. Not kitchen ones, though. Which shall I go for? The industrial-strength flame-thrower? Or the little one?
Will the big one shoot my pudding into the venetian blinds, incinerating us all? Will the small one take an hour as a feeble flicker s-l-o-w-l-y adds a tinge of colour to the meringue?
I’m not brave. The little one it is.
If I’m going to immolate myself as well as the pudding, you’re all coming with me.
Damn. We’ve forgotten how to turn the blowtorch off. Oh well, it will run out of gas soon.
And here it is!!
Guess what? I’ve got half a Christmas Bombe in the freezer. But, unlike Albert, the Magic Pudding, this cut-and-come-again pudding probably won’t still be here this time next year.
After all, now that we have an Andrews Labor Government, it’s all about pudding.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 