Vegan MoFo day 17 - Sussex Pond Pudding, a traditional local dish

Today's MoFo prompt, cook a local dish, is a bit of a head scratcher. Does local mean from my town? My county? My country?

Given there's no good answers to that, I'm going to settle down with a recipe that's local to a particular part of England - albeit not my particular part of England.

Sussex Pond Pudding, as the name suggests, hails from the county of Sussex, one of the regions that border London. It's a very old recipe, apparently dating from the 17th century. You can kind of tell that, given the vast amount of fat and sugar that's in it - I guess people in the 1600s didn't live long enough to worry about diabetes or tooth decay!

The pond in the name refers to the thick caramel sauce that will seep out when the pudding is cut. No word on why it's a dish local to Sussex though - I'm pretty sure they're not known for their lemon groves over there!

According to the lazy person's font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, the original version didn't use a lemon in the centre, but an apple. Over time, however, it's a lemon that's become the accepted recipe. I was a bit dubious about whether or not to eat the lemon itself, but it becomes like a slightly sweeter marmalade version of itself. It's still pretty sharp, so don't go chowing down full speed.

Vegan Sussex Pond Pudding recipe

Ingredients

220g flour

110g vegan suet

150mls non-dairy milk

Zest of one lemon

Another whole lemon

Pinch of salt

80g light brown sugar 

80g vegan butter equivalent, plus a bit extra for greasing.

How you do it

Grease a five-inch pudding basin.

Mix together flour, suet, zest, and salt until combined, then add milk and bring together until you have  dough.

Roll out the dough until you have a large circle, about 30cms across. Cut out a third (so you have a sort of Pac-Man shape) and bring the two cut sides together to make a cone.

Put the dough cone in the basin and pat down.

Mix together the butter and sugar. Put half of the mix in the bottom of the dough base.

Pierce the lemon a good few times with a skewer and add to the basin. Pack the rest of the butter and sugar mix around it.

Take the remaining one third of dough and roll out to make a lid.

Brush the dough in the basin with water and press the lid down on top. 

Put a circle of pleated baking parchment, greaseproof paper or foil over the top of the pudding, and tie string around the circumference to keep it down.

Take a large saucepan and put a small sauce in the bottom. Put the basin on top of the saucer and pour boiling water into the saucepan until it reaches about two-thirds of the way up the basin.
Put on a low heat and leave to steam for two hours.
Let pudding rest for 10 minutes before turning out.