Potato Pudding-Pie

Potato Pudding-Pie - sounds rather stodgy and dull, doesn't it?

Ingredients:

• 1 lb boiled potatoes
• 6 oz butter
• 6 oz sugar (I used 5 oz and it was sweet enough)
• 4 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 1/4 of a nutmeg, grated
• Brandy, to taste (I used a tablespoonful)
• Pastry - (
• I used shortcrust, because I had some spare, but the recipe calls for puff )

Method:

Mash the potatoes with the butter, beat well together.  (The mix will become unctuous and creamy.)

Add the sugar - and suddenly the mixture becomes much slacker.

Whisk the eggs well (I used my mixer) then beat them into the mixture adding the nutmeg and brandy as flavouring.

Line you dish with pastry.   The recipe simply calls for you to pour in the mixture and then bake it in a quick oven until it is set.

I decided to bake the pastry case for ten minutes before adding the mixture.   I baked mine for approx 30 minutes at and checked on the wobble.   (I suggest a heat of approx 180 C, but you know your own oven.)

This was the result.  A Pudding-Pie which cuts like an egg custard tart and tastes like an egg custard tart.    

It was superb!

I dressed it up a little for my afternoon tea guests.    

Yet again, no one guessed at the main ingredient.  They all thought it was a delicious egg custard and came back for second slices.

My bedtime reading has become old recipe books, the history of food in England,  English food in India (Culinary Jottings for Madras), etc.   

A few weeks ago it would have been mainly Scottish detective stories or biographies!

I am getting used to the minimal directions, the lack of large and glossy photographs.   I'm finding these little forays into old recipes as relaxing as I find cooking with my Rayburn.   No expectations or pressure, but if it works (and they all have, so far) then I am delighted.   So are my friends and family - my ever-hungry friends and family.

x

ps  This recipe was found in 'Good Things in England' by Florence White.

Lemon, Currant & Potato Cheesecake...

This recipe comes from a large and very tatty notebook which was originally an arithmetic exercise book for the daughter of a vicar.   It was abandoned as an exercise book, for whatever reason, and used for noting down recipes, etc by the cook at a vicarage, way back in the mid 1800's.

It's a superb book, packed with recipes and notes.

Obviously there is that magical (for me) element, handwriting, how much more personal can it get?   Then there is the way it has been so well-used over such a long period of time, splashes, splodges, finger marks, each mark a badge of honour as far as I am concerned.

Tucked down at the bottom of a page, I found this recipe for cheesecakes.   As soon as I was sure that I really was reading 'mashed potatoes' correctly, I was hooked.   I knew that I had to try it out because my curiosity had been well and truly piqued.      The writing is a bit shakey, and definitely a different hand from the other pages.

As is normal for this type of book instructions are minimal, and of course there are no pretty photographs to show off the final dish.   Once again I found this an exciting little challenge as I read the ingredients and had to decide how best to make the dish work for me.    I also decided to make a little change of my own, I have a new bottle of lemon essence, but I decided to grate the rind from a large and lovely lemon and incorporate that instead.


Potato Cheesecake

1 lb mashed potatoes
1/4 lb butter
1/4 lb sugar
1/4 lb currants
2 eggs
3 Tea Biscuits (I used Rich Tea Biscuits, crushed)
a few drops of lemon essence (I used grated lemon rind instead)


I decided to beat the sugar and butter together, then I beat the eggs lightly and incorporated them into the butter and sugar.      I crushed the Rich Tea Biscuits and added them, the grated lemon rind, and the currants, to the mashed potato, which I then beat  into the creamed butter/sugar/egg mixture.

I assumed that the 'paste' referred to in the recipe was pastry, so I had already baked blind a pastry flan case.   I popped the mixture in and baked it in a moderate oven (180 C) for about 45 minutes.  I had my fingers crossed.

This was the result!

Okay, so it's not like a modern cheesecake, but it was so delicious, everyone enjoyed it.    The taste was something like a particularly nice bread and butter pudding - and I know of at least one person in blog-world who will cringe at the very idea of tasting that...Cro!

We all enjoyed it and it will most certainly feature on our sweet treats menu, occasionally.

There was absolutely no hint that it was largely made up of left-over mashed potatoes!

No doubt the flavour and texture would be altered by the choice of potato, I'll have to try it out.