Sunday Kitchen: Esther at QT Auckland’s Sean Connolly + Treacle pudding recipe

Esther at QT Auckland's head chef Sean Connolly. Photo / Supplied

When Sean Connolly looks back at his childhood, he counts his grandmother, Esther (after whom the Auckland restaurant he heads is named), as a key food influence for him. With Mother’s Day on the horizon, Connolly and his team have created a special Mother’s Day menu to help celebrate our heroines - and this traditional treacle pudding gets star billing for dessert.

What does Sunday look like in your kitchen?

Eating crispy bacon and letting the whole house fill with the smoky aromas; three short blacks; two cups of earl gray in a teacup, preferably never a mug; buying flowers for the kitchen; reading a newspaper - I love the tactile nature and the ceremony of flicking through the weekend papers; listening to an old vinyl on my 1969 record player; going for a walk with the lads, talking rubbish and jumping in the ocean; pulling out my 1989 Jag XJS and hand-washing and polishing it; and lastly, Sunday dinner. My kids come to visit - I choose special bottles of wine, tell bad dad jokes and get ridiculed by my children. There’s nothing that makes me happier than watching a conversation explode with the kids’ opinions, I learn so much.

Why have you chosen this recipe?

Mother’s Day is coming, and I wanted to remember my mother’s mother. My parents were very hard-working. I’d finish school before they got home, so I’d go around and hang with my grandparents, Esther and Ted.

Esther was always baking, and we spoke a lot about ingredients. The most interesting one for me was the suet puddings and dumplings - it seemed to be a staple of her cooking. This recipe was one of Esther’s favourites and a real treat for us kids.

Esther was a great storyteller. We’d sit around the table talking about the war and she would share stories of her struggles of putting food on the table, as many women did at the time in World War II. Every time we spoke about a dish that week, the following week Esther would have it for dinner.

This dish, treacle pudding, is a celebration of the good times around the table, food to make people smile, even when times are tough are all around us.

There are so many ways to make secondary cuts and offal into beautiful things, such as lard - pig fat - used in shortcrust pastry; suet - beef kidney fat - used in sweet puddings, such as treacle sponge and savoury dumplings for casseroles; pig blood - used in our own black pudding at Esther; veal shins - for Osso Bucco, or bone marrow, roasted and spread on toast... the list goes on.

The real art is what chefs can do with unwanted cuts or very little in the pantry.

Treacle pudding

Serves 4-6

⅓ cup golden syrup, plus extra for drizzling

200g vegetable suet, coarsely grated

200g caster sugar

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

3 eggs

1 Tbsp lemon zest

2 Tbsp milk

Softened butter, for greasing

Vanilla icecream or custard, for serving

Grease a 1L capacity pudding basin and pour in the golden syrup.

Place the suet and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and using the paddle attachment beat on medium-high for 3-4 minutes or until creamy. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add 3 tablespoons of the flour mix to the sugar mix and mix for 30 seconds.

Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl between each egg. Gently fold the remaining flour mix, lemon zest and milk into the sugar mix.

Spoon the mix into the pudding basin. Cover with a lid or a baking paper and foil, making a pleat in the centre to allow the pudding to rise. Tie the foil securely with string, then place into a large saucepan of simmering water, that comes halfway up the sides of the pudding basin.

Steam for 1½ hours. Allow to rest in the basin for 5 minutes before turning out on to a serving plate. Serve drizzled with extra syrup and icecream or custard.