(eerie music) (witch laughing) - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy, how are you? It's great to see you and welcome back. Today, I'm going to be making a recipe with the most intriguing name. It's called Dead Man's Leg. Isn't that a phenomenal name? Intriguing, mysterious,
grim, slightly horrific. Now, a Dead Man's Leg is not
literally a dead man's leg. It's a pudding as the
British call it or a dessert. It is a classic boiled dessert. If you haven't seen my Drowned or Boiled Baby recipe, which is another terribly named dish that I made a few years ago, I'll put a link to that down below. But that too is a pudding
or a boiled dessert. Basically, it's like a biscuit dough that is wrapped up in some linen and then placed into boiling water and boiled as a means of cooking it. You can also steam it as well, but today, we are going to be boiling it. Now, I first learned about Dead Man's Leg when I was researching the
Drowned or Boiled Baby, which I got from this book, which is "Lobscouse And Spotted Dog." It's a companion to the
Aubrey/Maturin novels, which I have not read. This was recommended by
a few of my lovelies. This book is written by
Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas. This book has lots of
intriguing period recipes. I bookmarked a lot of these
intriguingly titled dishes, including this one. Yep, and it is exactly what the title says, bat guano and water. Oh my goodness! So another name for a Dead Man's Leg is a Jam Roly-Poly, and this book calls it the Jam Roly-Poly, but I'm making the Dead Man's
Leg recipe from this book, the "Wilderness Chef" by Ray Mears, the famous outdoorsman. And I got this book from my
library, love my library. And Ray has a recipe for Dead Man's Leg. I like this recipe, it's
a bit of a modern take, although it uses the
traditional boil method. It uses self-rising flour, and he suggests that this is something that you might want to make
on your next camping trip. It's that simple and easy, but it does take some time
to cook, a couple of hours. So let's go ahead, get started. So in a large mixing bowl, we're gonna add our self-rising flour. Now, self-rising flour contains
our baking powder and salt. If you don't have self-rising flour, you probably have baking powder. And there are recipe conversions online. It's something like a cup of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a half teaspoon of salt, something like that, don't quote me on it. Google is your friend most of the time. And then we're gonna add some suet. And suet is beef tallow or fat. And this has been processed,
so it's, like, pelletized. It says shredded. I think traditionally
this was grated manually, which is a lot of work. So give thanks to the
machines that did that for me. And some sugar, because this is a dessert. So it's kind of like a biscuit, right? We've got fat, flour, leavening, sugar, and there's salt
already in the flour, so we don't need to add any of that. Next, we're just gonna add some milk to combine this into a dough. From my understanding
after making these recipes, a pudding in British culture is not the pudding that
we consider in the US. In the US, in the States, I think of pudding as like
jello pudding, like a custard. But generally speaking, Brits call a pudding a dessert of any kind, apparently. But it also specifically can mean this kind of steamed dessert,
kind of like a figgy pudding or Figgy Duff or Christmas pudding. It's kind of like a cake
that is made in a tin or wrapped in linen or
some kind of fabric, and then boiled or steamed, which is akin to what
we're gonna be doing today. So here we have it, it's
forming a dough, great. It's a little sticky, I might
need some additional flour. We'll see. Now, this doesn't require
too much kneading. We just want this to form a dough. Use my scraper. I use this a lot. If you make any breads or doughs, really handy tool right here. So I'm just working this
to get all that flour in. That's pretty good. Okay, next, we're gonna
roll out our biscuit dough into a rectangle. And there are not specific dimensions. It just says about two inches
shy of the width of your pot. If this is a recipe that you
can make on a camping trip, it doesn't have to be too specific, eh? And there are no pictures, so I don't really know
what the finished product is supposed to look like, but that's kind of fun too, to be able to use your imagination. I think it's called Dead Man's Leg because of the method of cooking it, you swaddle it in a towel and tie it up so it can grimly look like
a dead man's leg I guess is what I can gather
where the name comes from. All right, so I've got my lid here. Yeah, I think that's
certainly wide enough. Got a dish of water here. And now we've got some raspberry jam. I'm gonna use about six
to eight tablespoons to coat the inside of this. (spoon tapping) I'm using Bonne Maman, my husband's favorite. I'm not eating too much bread these days, so sadly, that means less
jam for me, which is fine. Okay, now we're going
to spread this evenly, but we're gonna leave a
border around the edges, because as we roll it, the jam's gonna be
pressed out to the edges, and we don't want it to ooze everywhere. It smells so good. I have a memory of picking
the last bits of raspberries from a farm in Montana with my friends, and it was delightful. We paid a flat rate to pick as
many of the last raspberries from the vines at the end of the season. It was so much fun, and I had so many super ripe raspberries. I made jam, and it was a lot of fun. Okay, so very nice. Are you one of those people
that likes to get jam or honey all the way to
the edges of the toast? I am one of those people. My husband is not, but I said, "Come on, you're
gonna short trip the edges? They're not gonna taste as good if you don't get the jam
all the way to the side." All right, now we're
going to roll our leg up. Nothing was said about rolling
it tightly or anything. It just said to roll it up. So here we are, and then I'm gonna add a
bit of water to the sides so that we can seal it as we go along. As I said, we don't want
any of the jam leaking out, so I'm gonna kind of
press it along as we go. See how the jam is kind of building up? That's why we've left a
clean edge on the end there. And then more water to
seal the last bit here. Oh, even with leaving a bit, I still have some jam wanting to leak out. Well then. Put less jam than I did. Now here I've got a piece of muslin, just a piece of cotton cloth. Nice and then that I've scalded, meaning I dipped it into boiling water. And I'm gonna ring out the excess water. And this is what we're
gonna cook the leg in. Isn't this great? Love it. It's very thin. If you don't have a piece of
cloth like this lying around, you can use a flower sack towel. That'd be just fine. So lay it out and then we're gonna take some flour and liberally dust this. This will keep the pudding from sticking. (bag crinkling) So in we go. Swaddle it up, flour it all the way. Roll it up. (bag crinkling) Not gonna roll it up too tightly, 'cause it is going to expand. All right, there's the leg. Now I'm gonna take some cotton string. We're gonna tie it up just like we were tying
a roast or something. And again, we're not supposed
to tie it too tightly, so leaving a little bit
of slack on the ends. And then Ray says to tie it
twice in the middle as well. So slide this underneath. (scissors snipping)
(scissors tapping) And I'm tying it, but not too tightly, just so, see? A little bit of slack. We'll see how it turns out. Trim these off. (scissors tapping) (scissors snipping) (scissors tapping) (scissors snipping) (device beeping) What is that? Oh, that's my hot water. Okay. Ties are shortened. All righty, my lovelies, I'm back with my vessel
filled with boiling water. Now we're going to plunge our leg into the water. Here we go. Should I go this way? Okay. (hums) There goes our pudding. Submerge it. I'm gonna put the tails in there as well. Okay. I'm gonna top it with a
little bit more water, so that the pudding is
completely submerged. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Gonna cover this and cook
this for two to three hours, and then we'll take it out, open it up, and give our Dead Man's Leg a taste. All righty, lovelies, I'll
see you in a little bit. Bye. (laughs) (water bubbling)
(eerie music) (witch laughing) All righty, my lovelies, I am back. It has been about three hours since I placed my Dead Man's
Leg into boiling water, and it should be complete. Now I've let it cool a little
bit before we taste it. So let's see what it looks like. (hums) Oh my gosh. It's kind of amazing, that little bit of raspberry
jam that oozed out the top gives it a little bit
of a red kind of vein. It's kind of amazing. So this has been cooling off a little bit, so I can pick it up with my fingers. You ready for this? Here we go. The Dead Man's Leg. (Emily giggling)
(water dripping) Oh my goodness. Let's get the excess water off of it. Look at that. Does it look like an, it looks more like an arm, doesn't it? A Dead Man's Arm, mhm. (giggles) Wow. Look at that. See that raspberry vein? Oh my gosh. So Dead Man's Leg, along
with lots of other puddings, are served with custard. So I picked up some
Bird's Instant Custard, and I am gonna mix it up. Oof. Smells like milky vanilla. So dump that in, and we'll wait for my
water to come up to a boil. So let's go ahead and
cut this open, shall we? (scissors snipping) Let's open it up. So look at, it's like gauze, and it's sticking a bit, but not too much. Look at that. It's kind of slimy. Just curious. All right, I think my water
just came up to the boil. Wow, look how yellow it is. (water splashing) (Emmy babbles) And then whisk it and let
it sit for one minute. And that's it, instant custard. And look at that, it's
thickening up beautifully. All right, I'm gonna
let that sit on its own and let's continue unrolling
our Dead Man's Leg. Smells good, I can smell the raspberry. (dessert squishing) (birds chirping) Wow. It's not very attractive, I have to say. Oh my goodness, this is horrifying! Look at this. It looks like a pork tenderloin. I couldn't make something look more gnarly and like a dead man's limb,
arm, whatever this is, leg. This is the stuff of nightmares. I love it! All righty, let's go ahead and
slice it and give it a taste. That is just horrifying. Wow. All righty, here we go. Let's give it a slice. Oh, wow. Oh my gosh and it's tough. Wow. Look at it, it's swirled. Isn't that wild? Wow, wow. Let's cut this side. Oh my gosh, there it is. Maybe I should have cooked
it a little bit longer. It looks a little bit
doughy in the middle. Well, we're not gonna worry about that. Look at that. Amazing, that's horrifying. So now I'm gonna put our little pieces of leg and pour custard on top. Ready? Blub, blub, blub. (giggles) Wow, look how yellow it is. It looks like eggs or
something, oh my gosh. Okay, somehow that didn't pour quite how I thought it was going to pour. It's a lot thicker. It almost looks like a
hollandaise sauce on there. All right, let's just
taste the custard first. Itadakimasu. Mm, sweet, milky, slightly vanilla, but more milky than eggy. When I see this bright yellow color, I immediately think eggy,
but not really eggy at all. It tastes a little bit like cereal milk. That's what it reminds me of. But thicker in consistency, of course. All righty, let's taste
the Dead Man's Leg. There it is. Itadakimasu. Mm! (fork tapping) It's actually very nice. The predominant flavor, of course, is raspberry from all that raspberry jam. It goes really nicely with
that little vanilla custard, this light milkiness. The texture is dense. It's got a little bit of a chew to it. Mhm. I like it. I'm getting some raspberry seeds in it, which is a nice crunch, but it's a pretty good dessert. The texture is very, very different from any dessert that I'm used to having. It's not like a cake, which
is light and airy and fluffy. It's dense and slightly chewy, like, kind of like a dumpling, if you have chicken and
dumplings, a little bit like that, but not fluffy, definitely dense. In terms of flavor,
it's a little bit like, it's not like a biscuit either. Mm, oh, you know what the texture's like? The texture's like gnocchi, Italian pasta that's made with
potatoes, mashed potatoes. It has that texture, a little bit bouncy,
dense when you bite it. But the flavor is raspberry,
just lightly sweet. But a very nice little dessert. Mhm. I like the texture. I was expecting it to be stodgy
or just doughy, too bready. But the raspberry is
perfectly swirled inside and makes it completely flavorful
and very much a dessert. But it does look very shocking and quite horrifying if you ask me if you've not used to
seeing something like this and equate it to something delicious. And if someone calls
this a Dead Man's Leg, you'd be surprised. And I can see why people
call it a Jam Roly-Poly. Yes. All righty, my lovelies,
thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed that one,
I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media,
like this video, subscribe, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo, take care. Bye! (gentle music) Isn't this amazing? It's like the perfect size of my own limb, like, this is my arm incredible. (hums)
