Plough Pudding

Suetcrust pastry, steamed or baked, is, I believe, one of the great English inventions, a homely native alternative to the more elegant pastries and yeast doughs of European culinary tradition. Though hardly suitable for a low-cholesterol diet, I find the resulting crust more digestible and less cloyingly rich than butter-based alternatives.

Interestingly, suetcrust is creeping back on to metropolitan menus. This savoury roly-poly is a true peasant dish, with many variants, like gre