My parents are in town and this is generally my time to show off my culinary skills. Of course it is a different matter that almost all of my recipes are a gift from my mom. This recipe for bread pudding is a simple one and has a 99.9% (meaning you have to really be the burn-water types to fail) success rate. So here goes

Ingredients: 10 slices of bread (stale bread too is fine), 2 eggs, mixed fruit or strawberry jam, 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (cashews, almonds, pista), 2 tbsps raisins, 2 tbsps butter, 2 cups milk, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method: Beat up the milk and sugar. Whisk the eggs separately and then add it to the milk and sugar and mix well. Add the vanilla essence and keep the mixture aside. Now take a vessel that you can steam a pudding in. Grease the vessel well with the two tbsps of butter. Put a full slice of bread at the bottom. Now tear up bits of two slices and put them in the vessel. Next sprinkle some nuts, put in a dollop or two of jam and pour a bit of the egg-milk-sugar mix. Press down the bread, till it soaks the mixture well. Repeat the process till you have used up all the bread, nuts, jam and mixture. Finally put a dollop of butter in the center of the dish.

Fill you pressure cooker with at least 3 inches of water.Place the vessel in and steam (this means without the whistle) for around half hour. Keep a ear on the cooker and if you feel the water levels have dried up, open the cooker and add more water.

After half hour, take out the pudding and let it stand till it reaches room temperature. Only then do you attempt overturn the pudding. You can cut slices of the pudding and serve with chocolate sauce or even whipped cream and candied cherries.

Enjoy!!!