Guava Duff

As tradition built it

Guava Duff

Boiled 1 hour or more.

Ingredients

The filling

• 12 guavas, peeled
• as needed water
• 120ml sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground allspice

The dough

• 960ml flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 180ml shortening
• 180ml milk
• 1 egg, beaten

The rum butter sauce

• 60ml butter
• 240ml icing sugar
• 1 tsp boiling water
• a dash salt
• 2 tbsp rum or brandy

Method

1. Halve the guavas, take out the seeds and dice the fruit. Strain off the juice and keep it. Simmer the fruit in water with the sugar, cinnamon and allspice until soft.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt and cut in the shortening. Add the milk and egg to make a soft dough and knead it smooth.
3. Roll it out on a floured board, lay the guava down the middle, roll it up into a spiral and seal the edges carefully.
4. Wrap it in a cotton or linen cloth, or foil and parchment, and tie it securely. Submerge it in a large pot of boiling water for an hour or more.
5. For the sauce, cream the butter, beat in the icing sugar gradually, then the boiling water, salt and rum, until fluffy.
6. Slice the duff 2.5cm thick and put a tablespoon of sauce on each hot slice to melt.

Notes

Duff itself, a dough rolled around a filling and boiled in a sealed cloth, is a nineteenth century British pudding technique, documented in British soldiers' First World War trench diet and in Henry Lawson's 1901 short-story mention of plum duff, predating any Bahamian adaptation of it. What is Bahamian is the guava in place of the British plum or raisin filling.

The recipe is Vernice Cooper's, from the 1986 Bahamian community cookbook Rake 'N' Scrape In De Kitchen, as reproduced by Tru Bahamian Food Tours. Atlantis, on Paradise Island, rolls three sheets of a butter and egg dough round raw guava with sieved pulp, bakes them in foil at 180°C for 45 minutes, and makes the sauce with whisked egg whites. No source uses a yeasted dough.

What a modern chef changes

Two-Texture Guava, Caramelised Finish

Rung 06

Method

1. Reduce a portion of guava pulp sous vide at a low, controlled temperature with a little sugar into a concentrated compote, layered beneath the raw or lightly stewed fruit for a genuine two-texture filling rather than one uniform pulp.
2. Dry a portion of guava in a dehydrator and fold it back through the filling for pockets of concentrated fruit against the softer cooked layer.
3. Finish the sliced duff briefly under a Big Green Egg run hot, for a light caramelisation on the cut surface that the traditional steamed method cannot give on its own, before the rum butter sauce is poured over.