One step closer to stepping out for a meal

Restrictions having eased, this would be our first ‘dinner’ in months, and boy, did it deliver.

Steamed golden syrup puddings.

Bob never does things by halves. So when he announced that he and a sidekick would be driving down the freeway to cook us dinner, I genuinely didn’t know whether to smile or fret. People in and around the restaurant industry, such as it is these days, tend to treat the notion of school nights, particularly Mondays, with a kind of ragged disdain. Normal people, like you and me, cook risotto and curl up on the couch to watch something that finishes by 9.30, then clean our teeth and go to sleep, sober.

“Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll bring the lot,” said Bob. That’s what I was worried about; his enthusiasm for life reaches its apotheosis in and around the kitchen, table and bar. Never have I known anyone whose lust for culinary practice and pleasure is so naked.

For all of us, it would be the first “dinner” in months, the restrictions having eased to a degree, allowing city and country to once again mingle in small numbers, glass-in-hand. At a distance, of course. Bob’s sidekick – we’ll call him Jim – is in the restaurant caper and born to it, so it would be like going out to dinner in a restaurant, kind of. And clearly these guys were itching for a bit of the life denied us all by the lockdown. “We’ll do the pudding,” said the in-house consultant. It was the least we could.

They arrived in Bob’s new Bavarian hot rod, which spewed forth a most extraordinary quantity of everything. Apart from travelling with his own commercial knife sheath, Bob walked down the hall with a professional sous-vide machine, for goodness sake.

Six duck breasts in bags for poaching at 52.5C for an hour. A jar of duck/chicken/pork-knuckle jus that started life as 10 litres of liquid and a bunch of bones and, 36 hours later, was reduced to 500ml of intense, utterly delicious sauce. Brussels sprouts, lardons, spring onions... everything prepped and vacuum bagged. Duck fat for the potatoes. For snacks: a couple of kilos of outstanding Shark Bay prawns and a jar of magnificent, fiery XO sauce he’d whipped up at home (thank God) to brush on them before going on the Weber. Amazing.

I introduced the guests to the rhubarb Negroni before settling into the 18 assorted bottles of quality wine Jim carried in from the car. (I’m serious. Maybe he was worried it would go off while his restaurants were shut?) And no, we four barely got through a third of them. It was one helluva dinner, and Bob only cut himself in the kitchen once, peeling spuds, so that’s a win.

And I truthfully think pudding maintained both the classic style of the dinner and the standard set by the food that came before it. Poached pears, custard and steamed individual golden syrup puddings, like a glam version of boarding school dessert. If, like me, you had forgotten how good is the steamed golden syrup pud, I urge you to refresh yourself. It’s pretty simple to make one for sharing, too. Bung all this into a food processor: 175g each of caster sugar, unsalted butter and self-raising flour, three large eggs, 45ml milk, and the zest and juice of half a lemon. All at room temperature, or it won’t work; don’t ask me why. Blend to a thick, slow-pouring consistency. You may need to add a splash more milk.

Butter a ceramic pudding basin, put 250ml of golden syrup in the bottom and top with batter. Make a lid for your bowl using baking paper and foil pleated together, and secure it with string. Find a large saucepan and some kind of trivet to sit your pudding bowl on; fill the pan with water to about half the height of the bowl, cover and simmer for two hours minimum; top up if necessary with boiling water. Make some custard.

At this point you must resist, with all your will, digging out that bottle of d’Yquem you’d stashed away to drink, one day, with the guy who gave it to you for your 50th. That would be just stupid. At least it’s a gesture I know Bob would appreciate, if not necessarily remember.

Needless to say I was glad to see the Bavarian’s tail-lights next day. And while I felt a little dusty, I also I felt an important step forward on the path back to normality had been taken. In full.

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