Panettone Bread and Butter Pudding

Tis the Christmas season and there are parties and barbeques-a-plenty, everyone catching up before they disappear for the holidays and celebrating with friends.  It's also the time of the year that those hosting Christmas dos are looking for that perfect dish - you know, the one you can prepare ahead and heat up, that's no trouble at all, so you can kick back and actually enjoy the party, rather than slaving in a hot kitchen while your friends and family drink the champagne!

This dish is just such a "prepare ahead" dessert.  Make it the morning or evening before, let it return to room temperature and then, just before you want to serve it, pop it in the oven to heat up, slice and serve steaming hot with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.  You can also serve an awful lot of people by simply doubling the recipe - one panettone will usually make two puddings.  It's delicious and always receives rave reviews, and for some reason a bowl of bread and butter pudding, pipping hot and scented with brandy, just feels like Christmas.

The other great thing about this recipe is that I now finally have a way to use the beautiful panettone bread I have often received as a hostess gift over the silly season.  I am not much of a "fruit toast" lover, so this recipe is perfect.  It has a richness that suits the flavours of a bread and butter pudding (just shy of the butteriness of brioche) and soaks up the custard mix with relish.

Panettone is a genius Italian cross between a cake and a bread, studded with dried fruits and wrapped in a paper base that I just love peeling off.   The traditional Italian panettone was first made in Milan during the Christmas season, and is often served as-is with hot cocoa or liqueur.  It's fabulous and I can't believe it took me so long to realise it - all those wasted panettone loaves tossed out in my past!  Such a waste!! So even if you aren't lucky enough to receive one of these wonderful loaves as a gift, run out and pick one up at your local deli, and get cooking.

Panettone Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

-  1 Italian panettone loaf
-  2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks (use the left over whites for meringue!)
-  250ml milk (full cream)
-  170ml thickened cream (whipping cream)
-  50gms caster sugar
-  2 measures of brandy (I used the armagnac I brought back from France... extra YUM)
-  pinch of salt
-  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-  2 tablespoons caster sugar for sprinkling

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius and butter an oven-safe baking dish of approximately 8 x 5 inches.  I used a square dish of approximately 7 x 7 inches - you don't have to be super precise.

Cut your panettone into 1 cm (approximately) thick slices.  You will really only need about half the panettone loaf for the recipe, so feel free and toast the leftovers to nibble on later while the dish is baking.

Line the baking dish with overlapping slices of panettone.  This dish will always look a little rustic - it's part of its charm - so don't fuss too much about getting this "perfect".

In a large bowl, beat your eggs and yolks, mix with the butter, cream, sugar and vanilla essence.  Now stir in your pinch of salt and brandy (or armagnac!).  Pour this over the bread slices so they all get a good dousing.

The key to this dish is to let the bread and butter pudding rest at this point for about 15 minutes which allows the bread to soak up the custard mix.  This avoids the pudding from getting too soggy at the bottom when you take it out of the oven.  Go make yourself a cup of tea and try some of the leftover slices of panettone while you wait.

Now, the pudding is well rested, so sprinkle it with sugar and then into the oven it goes for approximately 30-40 minutes.  Keep an eye on it, you want to take it out when it is a lovely golden brown and crispy on top.

 If you are serving now, slice and pop in some bowls, serving with with a scoop of ice-cream and/or a dollop of cream.  If you are serving up later that evening, allow to cool to room temperature, then cover with a clean tea towel until you are ready to reheat it in the oven.

And a Merry Christmas to all!

The Duck At Camont

Autumn (and we) have arrived in Gascony. At least it's supposed to be autumn...the leaves are turning and there are horse chestnuts littered everywhere underfoot, but it's been 30 degrees Celcius most days with deliciously blue skies and long, light evenings. The locals say this is the hottest October in a century, I am definitely not complaining!







We've done a little bit of exploring over recent days, a little bit more eating and a whole lot of cooking. Renting a car (and buying a GPS) was genius, as we've been able to get out and explore the beautiful, rolling countryside and the medieval villages and market towns scattered over the Gascon hills and woods.







We ate on Sunday at a little restaurant next to a fortified village where we devoured lunch on the terrace, complete with local wine. The cassoulet - a local stew of white beans, duck and bacon - was everything I had imagined (we'll be learning how to cook it this week) although a little heavy in this heat compared with my lightly-fried river fish and an entree of the house foie gras and charcuterie.





Charcuterie seems to be a growing theme in this week's journey. The French love nothing more than a platter of charcuterie (cured hams, pates and rillette) laid out on a platter to nibble over a glass of wine in the evening, or any time really. But here in Gascony the charcuterie tradition seems to be a way of life.







Yesterday we were swept up by Kate Hill, along with our fellow classmates, from our inn in the lovely town of Nerac and driven to our first stop, the home and butchery of Kate's good friends, the Chapolards - a family of local butchers who were busy making their famous sausages and cured haunches of pork when we pulled up. We picked up a selection of these incredible, lightly-smoked and cured meats - and one pink pork belly - to use in our afternoon of cooking (apparently the sausages spend a few days hanging inside Mr Chapolard's chimney while they cure). You'll see in the photos that this bounty of meat, along with locally-grown legumes, provided the inspiration for our dinner feast cooked in Kate's kitchen on the canal in Camont.

But the food of Gascony is about more than cured meats and sausages, although those are pretty special, it has to be said. The duck, the pork, the armagnac and crisp white wines, the foie gras for which they are rightly famous, and the beans and lentils, all flavoured with pepper and salt, bay and thyme and pimento, and the sunlight of the south.

Enroute to Camont we made for a local winery and armagnac house for a tasting. Now, at this point in the post, I must confess to a dark prejudice of mine...I don't like red wines. I don't know why, but the tannin in red wine which everyone else seems to enjoy leaves me cold. I have on occasion enjoyed a small amount of very, very good red wine, but in general I go straight to the white portion of any wine list. So, while I am told the local Gascon red (tannat) is excellent, I have been gushing over the quality of the whites. As demand for the local armagnac has dwindled, the growers of the white grapes used for it have been turning increasingly to white wine to utilise the leftover grapes at harvest time, and diversify their profit base. Well, it's wonderful stuff, and incredibly well priced at around $6 a bottle for some terrific light, well-flavored white wines. The roses are also fantastic, not at all the sickly sweet stuff we often find back home, and perfect for the robust Gascon food and the hot weather.









That said, after a tasting of a number of different years of armagnac, I am very happy that production of this wonderful spirit continues in this part of the work. I might have splashed out on a few bottles to lug home, and Kate also assures me it goes great in cooking as well.

Next, with a supply of delicious local wine in the car to drink with our week's cooking around Kate's table, we ventured to Camont to roll up our sleeves, tie on our aprons and get chopping.





In deference to the hot weather, Kate postponed the cassoulet, and instead guided us through the soaking, simmering and sautéing of local white beans, tossed through with leeks sautéed in duck fat and butter, which served as the based for a long spiral of local sausage.

Next, we simmered some local, tiny green puys lentils with lovage, thyme and shallots. Salted and tossed through with a vinaigrette, we lay slices of the charcuterie bought earlier in the day on top and scattered the dish with chopped cornichons (teeny, tiny gherkins). Finally, Kate scored a small piece of pork belly - the flesh a bright pink not normally seen on Australian pork - and rubbed it with a mix of salt, pepper, ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and pimento. She popped it in a hot oven to crisp, turning down the heat for the majority of the cooking, and sliced it, juicy and dripping, on an antique wooden chopping board. (Don't worry, when I get home I will make sure and offer up the recipes!)







This feast was carried to the table, wine bottles in hand, and served up over laughter in the early dusk under the grapevines. I can't imagine a better way to end a day.