The internet is not short on commentary regarding an ever creeping tide of abstemiousness amongst younger generations than mine. A much-lauded increase in focus on wellness and issues of climate and sustainability have led old soaks in certain trades (the wine trade, for one) to lament the dwindling of the good times for their industry.
Kids of today, hey, not wanting to habitually sink a bottle of wine a night and bring on early-onset gout via an expense account - what is the world coming to?
Maybe it says too much about my childhood, but I have the fondest of memories of puddings such as peaches baked in amaretto, red wine poached pears, proper boozy trifles, chocolate things with kirsch, creamy things with coffee and brandy, sponges soaked in ethanol, things that were flambeed in rocket fuel, etc; you get the gist. A family favourite anecdote concerns a holiday in Portugal when I was barely out of nappies when I found myself alone at a deserted table with a tray of peaches roasted in a bottle of local wine and proceeded to wolf down the whole thing. I was found asleep under the table not too long afterwards and was wobbly legged for a good few days, as legend would have it.
Store cupboards of old, and I’m only going back a decade at most, would all have had a bottle of sherry, or some fortified wine, or a bottle of rum or brandy, or all of the above, somewhere about them. They would be plucked out at special occasions in order to soak into something spongy, whip into something fluffy, or splash into something busily macerating or simmering away. Now, though, it feels as if the boozy pudding is not long for this world.
The joy of a boozy pudding, for me, is that neither the modus operandi nor the end result is aimed squarely towards unsteady obliteration, but instead leans towards a simple giggling pleasing warmth. They are the height of decadence. You’re not eating them to get pissed, just for the sheer pleasure of it. I think back to the jolly fossils of seaside Hotel dining rooms where a roly-poly chap in a high torque would come ambling between the tables with a wooden trolly on which he might torch a meringue, Suzette a crêpe, or flambee a banana. What joy. What theatre. What warming boozy sweetness to end a delightful meal.
As a chef, I worked for a good time with a fine champion of the boozy pudding, Stevie Parle at the Dock Kitchen. For a happy period, my life was full of tiramisu, its ladyfingers dipped in a solution that was equal parts strong espresso and stronger brandy; or the chocolate, apricot and cognac cake that you could still feel breathing away alcoholically inside you as you made your way home after a long double shift; or the sorbet of chocolate, ancho chilli and Mezcal, or of blood orange and Campari, both so amped up by their booze that they were closer to digestif than dessert; and my personal favourite, the baba that bathed in a sugar syrup of the sweetest Nicaraguan rum until reaching peak saturation, and then, (the final flourish of the chef before the thing was taken to the table,) a splash of neat rum on the whipped cream that accompanied it.
So why have we lost the love for these naughty boozy desserts? On the one hand, I suppose, the high boozy flavour of the thing can be divisive, I can see that. Perhaps, also, the spectacle of many boozy desserts trends away from the Instagram-able and the Tik Tok-able. So often the boozy dessert is beige or creamy or the faint gold of a sponge, the razmataz of the booze all working away inside the thing to produce fireworks that no camera phone or filter can capture. Or maybe it is just a negative association? Grandma, snoring away after one too many sherries, a wasteland of chocolate and cherry liqueur wrappers strewn about her house slippers? Or Grandad breathing in your face with stories of Allied invasions or dinosaur politicians, his breath a mist of fumes both alcoholic and caffeinated. Or, perhaps fancy old desserts as a genre are simply a dying breed. At home, there is seldom a calling for proper dessert, and when the need does arise, so often a tub of something, or a forgiving bake (bought or made), or some meringue, fruit and whipped cream does the job. In restaurants, it is much cheaper and easier also to focus on a good tart, something baked and chocolatey, a crowd-pleasing ice cream, than it is to steep something in booze and watch as your clientele ignore its listing entirely. A quick glance at the current menu’s of twenty of London’s most popular restaurants shows that only a handful of puddings currently on sale in the capital have a boozy bent.
My prediction is that I am out of touch. That the demand for these naughty old treats is in a race towards irrelevance; the chance of a turn towards popularity negligible. And yet, for those who might indulge a stagger down Nostalgia Avenue, below are recipes for four of my personal favourites when it comes to boozy puddings. The first is for Rum Baba with whipped cream, a nod to my time at the Dock Kitchen. Then, Zabaglione and roasted boozy stone fruit, a triumph of science - egg, sugar, technique, and marsala - there is little more decadent than featherweight zabaglione and some fruit at the peak of its season, either macerated or roasted in more of the hearty booze. As if that’s not enough, I’ve included a recipe for my version of Bananas Foster, a dish of bananas (unsurprisingly) flambeed in butter, sugar and (in this case) Woodford Reserve, an oaky whiskey that loves a banana almost as much as I do. And then, to finish with a return to something with some class, I have included a recipe for set cream and prunes soaked in earl grey tea and grappa. It reminds me of grand hotels and carpeted dining rooms replete with pianist and dessert trolley. I don’t know why, really, as I think it is a version of a dessert that I first had at Sally Clarke’s in Notting Hill, but there you go, that’s how nostalgia and memory work I guess?
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