The undesirables-steak and kidney pudding

There are a lot of foods out there that are often deemed undesirable for all manner of reasons. Maybe they're seen as too unhealthy, low in quality, or old fashioned and have fallen out of favour.

Steak and kidney puddings appear to have become one of the latter.

While I love a good pie, if I had to choose between a pie or a pudding I'd pick the pudding almost every time, as I love suet/suet style pastries and desserts. During these cold winter months, from these puddings to dumplings in stews to a jam roly-poly with custard, steamed cooked pastry and the like is where it's at. But with this particular pudding it's not just about the outer casing, but what's within. Yes the gravy is lovely, and the bits of steak are nice, but the second reason I really enjoy these is for the kidney.

And it's not just kidney, but offal in general that I enjoy eating. Up to now I haven't been eating it a lot at home as K isn't a fan, and when bought raw there's often too much just for one person, and so instead I have it if a restaurant has it on the menu, or in ready meal form like these puddings, or tv dinner liver and onions with mash etc.

This year though, we're planning our food weeks where, I cook for both of us during the work week, K cooks when he's off, and the next work week we cook for ourselves. This way we both get a chance to enjoy meals that the other person isn't a fan of, which in my case will include offal, which I can cook up and eat over a couple of days so it doesn't go to waste (so expect future posts of me attempting to cook some...)

Anyway, kidney is one of those ingredients that, unless you do buy them raw to cook for yourself, you don't often see them in other foods, so it's nice to have something that's easy to cook, tasty, and has a rarely used ingredient that I like.

And so, this past Wednesday I steamed up a steak and kidney pudding for my dinner

and it was bloody delicious!

While I often have them with mash, this time around I was in the mood for croquettes (which I guess is just mash in another form) and a side of peas.

Lucky for me these came in a frozen pack of four, which means I have plenty stored away for the next time I'm in the mood for some steamed pastry goodness 😋