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Clash of the beef suet puddings – Guinness rich or cider brandy version victorious?

Consider the Rag Pudding? I never had until a decade ago when I was doing the words for chef Robert Owen Brown’s Crispy Squirrel and Vimto Trifle (MCR Books £12.99). Among 50 recipes celebrating the traditional food of the north, this speciality of Oldham millworkers was one of Rob’s less glamorous dishes. Just mince and onions in a suet crust steamed inside a ‘rag’. No need even for a pudding bowl, just freely available muslin or cotton cloth. Poor folk’s food, dispensing with even herbs or spices. 

Tying up the rag pudding
Serving (images Joby Catto)

This Saturday on our beloved Bracewell’s butcher’s stall on Todmorden Market there were  rag puddings on sale, sourced from the sole surviving commercial producer – Jackson’s Farm Fayre of Milnrow, who sell direct boil in the bag (or microwave) eight packs for £12.80. They are made by hand but using a hi-tech material instead of the original `rags’.

Suet remains essential also to more ambitious meat puddings and two high-profile specimens were mine to compare two days apart. First up was Ox Cheek and Guinness at The Devonshire pub in Soho, then Braised Short Rib with Red Wine and Somerset Cider Brandy at the Manchester outpost of Hawksmoor. 

Basic rag pudding
Brand leader
That something extra

This was hardly thrifty fare. The Devonshire pudding in its pool of jus cost £26, but duck fat chips were £6 extra and other veg sides a fiver;  the Hawksmoor came in at £25, but it was more substantial and the whole deal included beef dripping chips, mushy peas and extra gravy. Very chippy tea – in a restaurant. Pubbier than the Devonshire, which has arrived in the capital to great fanfare as the epitome of an old school dining hostelry.

Two of its co-founders bring impeccable food skills. Heston Blumenthal acolyte Ashley Palmer-Watts, once of the Fat Duck and Dinner, is there to elevate gastropub staples, Charlie ‘Flatiron’ Carroll to ensure the live fire cooking in the Grill Room does justice to the in-house butcher’s sourcing. But it is the the third of the Devonshire trio that has sparked all the social media attention. Oisin Rogers created the legend that is the Guinea Grill Mayfair, deservedly so. 

Devonshire’s finest
Hawksmoor ‘genius’

He has a thing about Guinness. In the Devonshire downstairs bar I witnessed the unbelievable amount of the dark stuff pouring through the pumps. Quite a buzz about the place. Maybe I prefer the pint you’ll get at the less manic Cock Tavern in Phoenix Street near King’s Cross, but it’s great to see Oisin’s well-tended stout playing an essential role in the ox cheek filling for the Devonshire’s suet pudding. Tasty, yet perhaps the reduction was too sticky for me, just as the chips were too dry and flakey. Collapse of all those Metropolitan stout parties bigging them up up.

The chips were better, fluffier inside, at Hawksmoor as I sampled their new lunchtime specials, which include that – superior – slow-braised short rib and root veg pudding. What tickles me about this total triumph on a plate is Oisin Rogers’ own accolade for it. When my fellow Manchester Food and Drink Awards judge and committed carnivore, Louise Rhind-Tutt Tweeted about the Three Year Aged Somerset Brandy twist to the filling he replied: “I wished we’d thought of this. Kinda genius.” And it is.

Suet and its savoury secrets

The distinctive blue, yellow and red packaging of Atora is the supermarket standard bearer for beef suet. From it tumble pellets of the shredded stuff, base for “for fluffy dumplings, pastries, puddings and pies”. Plant-based alternative on the shelves is vegetable suet, but there are issues with the presence of environmentally unfriendly palm oil. 

Nothing for me, though, is as satisfying as the real deal – the soft fat from around the kidneys that protects them from damage. Deep yellow in colour, it is rich in vitamins and essential fatty aids. Order it fresh from a proper butcher’s; they can remove impurities and mince it for you. Or you can grate it yourself. It keeps in the freezer. The umbrella term is tallow but that includes dripping, which is rendered fat from across the beast. 

Fresh beef suet has a bland taste (the mutton variety is more challengingly sheepish) and a dry, crumbly texture. When it’s incorporated into sweet dishes – think traditional Christmas Pudding – it brings a richness, yet somehow avoids making them taste meaty. For pie crusts, it creates a flaky and crispy texture that absorbs filling juices beguilingly.

Introducing the other new Hawksmoor lunchtime specials

Rump steak and chips keeps its place on the menu and is joined by, alongside the suet pudding, at prices ranging from £16 to £22…

Shortrib au poivre 

Slow-cooked for 10 hours until tender, brushed in mustard, dipped in cracked pepper and coated in peppercorn sauce then served with buttery mash or our beef-dripping fries.  

Flat iron steak

This tender shoulder cut  is char-grilled and served in the style of the hottest restaurant in 1930s Geneva: Café de Paris – with beef dripping fries and a salad of watercress, shaved radishes and cornichons in a mustard dressing. 

Charcoal-roasted hake

With slow-cooked peppers, onion, garlic, thyme and olive oil and finished with fresh basil leaves. 

Tunworth Royale patty melt

This burger/toasted cheese sandwich hybrid was invented in 1950s LA by William Wallace ‘Tiny’ Naylor (nerds note: he’s on the cover of the Beastie Boy’s 1994 album, Ill Communication). Hawksmoor makes theirs between slices of Texas Toast. with their stalwart burger patty, plus unctuous Tunworth and mozzarella for ‘maximum string factor’.  

Salt-baked celeriac

The veggie option, served with Hen of the Woods mushrooms glazed with soy and whipped ricotta celery leaves, capers and fresh marjoram.

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Feed the kids’ bodies and minds – Dishoom hits 20m charity meal milestone

A boon in life to have always been well fed. The same goes for my extended family. Far too many are not so lucky. It has been on my mind a lot of late as, at my stove, I enjoy the privilege of cooking for pleasure, not for hard-pressed subsistence. I’ve just prepared a herb-fragrant keema pau of minced mutton with a kachumber salad. It’s a favourite recipe from the ravishing Dishoom: From Bombay With Love cookbook, celebrating the Irani cafes of Old Mumbai and promoting the nine-strong Dishoom UK restaurant brand.

Dishoom recreates the feel of old Bombay…
…with dishes such as this rich dal

This huge success story is the creation of cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, whom I first met on a press trip to their London bases in advance of their branching out to Manchester in late 2018. It proved to be more than just the usual junket.

What struck me in their establishments was their mastery of authentic style alongside an accessible menu that still felt a refreshing antidote to curry house cliché. Also, thanks to a kind invitation to a family gathering in the presence of Shamil’s mother Rekha, I began to understand the ethical undertow to all they do. It was most evident in their determination to run their restaurants without barriers of prejudice. 

Their website offers a mission statement: ”We get Muslims and non-Muslims to celebrate Eid, and Hindus and non-Hindus to celebrate Diwali. We tie Knots of Protection on each other. We bring people from all cultures and all walks of life together in our restaurants, and we feed millions of children.”

Feeding the girls
Feeding the boys

That last commitment sounds staggering, but it is true. So far, they have donated the cost of 20 MILLION meals for charities – supporting in the UK Magic Breakfast, dedicated to providing meals so children don’t go hungry before school starts, and in their Indian homeland the The Akshaya Patra Foundation. This is a behemoth of an operation that has so far served up a staggering 3.5 BILLION free school meals. That’s healthy hot nourishment to 2.2 million children in 20,000 schools daily, dished in tiffin boxes out from 68 mega kitchens across the sub-continent. This remarkable video shows how they do it, mass producing sambar and rice for southern states, dal and roti for northern. 

Since 2020, separate from the Dishoom tie-in, Akshaya’s remit has also covered meals to children and vulnerable groups in North London The reason? 800,000 children in the capital alone are at risk from food poverty, while across the UK 1.7 million children of low income families are not eligible for free school meals. The figures I’m quoting are from Akshaya Patra’s own annual report, but I have no reason to doubt they are true. This is Marcus Rashford territory.

Their London hub is based, with unconscious irony, on Imperial Way, Watford, but a new pilot venture also takes in Nottingham, providing a hot meal for after school clubs. These are aimed at youngsters who have no surface at home where they can do homework and, possibly, parents with no educational confidence.

The importance of food charities for education

‘Akshaya’ means limitless and ‘Patra’ means a bowl of food. The guiding principle in India is to encourage kids to continue in education rather than forced to go to work too young or even beg. Across the sub-continent at least 35 million children aged 6-14 years do not attend school. And for those who do lack of nutrition seriously hinders their attention in class.

Let Ashkata UK Ceo Daniel Adams explain: “When hunger is a barrier to education it also becomes a barrier to social mobility. A child that is not fed can become a teenager that did not learn and an adult that stays in poverty. We care deeply about breaking down these barriers. It’s a social justice issue with long term benefits. To quote Nelson Mandela: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’.

“Dishoom are an extremely generous corporate patron who help power our programme. We make natural bedfellows through a love of for and nutrition with shared Indian roots. We are so grateful to them.”

Stalwart campaigner Jamie Oliver is on the case, too: “I truly believe that if every child had access to good, nutritious food, they would concentrate better in school, giving them a far greater chance at a better education, which in turn helps create a much stronger future generation. Akshaya Patra  is an incredible organisation, and their dedication, passion to make this happen is inspiring.” 

Dishoom’s pact with them came into being at Ramadan 2015. The Muslims have a name for it: Zakat. It’s a form of obligatory charity that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions. The literal meaning of the word is ‘to cleanse’; the belief is that paying Zakat purifies, increases and blesses the remainder of their wealth. The Thakrar family fortune originally sprung from their Tilda rice empire. For their Zakat Dishoom chose Akshaya and Magic Breakfast. At the Hindu Diwali the same year they made this joint partnership permanent.

For every meal (or home meal kit) Dishoom serves, they donate a meal to a child who would otherwise go hungry. More recently in Manchester they have also contributed handsomely to Eat Well, the restaurant and chef collective that delivers up to 1,000 meals a week to support people sidelined by poverty. 

Dishoom, Manchester Hall, 32 Bridge St, Manchester M3 3BT. 0161 537 3737. To donate to Akshaya Patra visit this link.

All the images are courtesy of Akshaya Patra, except for the two for Dishoom.

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