Yorkshire Pudding

Weird cultural and traditional food fascinates me. During lunch today I started thinking about weird foods and it led to a little online research. I’ve read all of James Herriot’s classic books, but thankfully a Google Books search yielded precisely the passage I was pondering without my flipping feverishly through four fat books to find it.  In his books, James Herriot (aka Alf Wight) explained the wonders of Yorkshire pudding:

“At the moment the phone rang, I was tasting something very near to my heart—Helen’s cooking. It was Sunday lunchtime, when the traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was served. My wife had just dropped a slab of the pudding on my plate and was pouring gravy over it, a rich brown flood with the soul of the meat in it and an aroma to dream of. I was starving after a typical country vet’s Sunday morning of rushing round farms and I was thinking, as I often did, that if I had some foreign gourmet to impress with the choicest sample of our British food then this is what I would give him. A great chunk of Yorkshire pud and gravy was the expedient of the thrifty farmers to fill their families’ stomachs before the real meal started. –‘Them that eats most puddin’ gets most meat,’ was the wily encouragement—but it was heaven… The shrilling phone cut cruelly into my reverie but I told myself that nothing was going to spoil this meal. The most urgent job in veterinary practice could wait until I had finished. But my  hand shook as I lifted the receiver and a mixture of anxiety and disbelief flowed through me as I heard the voice at the other end. It was Mr. Ripley. Oh please, no, not that long trek to Anson Hall on a Sunday… Helen looked up from the table with the stricken face of a woman who can visualise her Yorkshire pudding sagging into lifeless ruin. ‘Oh surely you don’t have to go this minute?’ ‘I’m sorry, Helen, this is one of those things I can’t leave…and the man sounds desperate. I’ve just got to go.’ My wife’s lips trembled. ‘All right, I’ll put it in the oven till you come back.’ As I left I saw her carrying the plate away. We both knew it was the end. No Yorkshire pud could survive a visit to Anson Hall.” [Source: The Best of James Herriot the Complete Edition Updated and Expanded]

I ADORE this story! It’s not even about Yorkshire pudding precisely, but it conveys more meaning than if it had been written solely to describe the stuff.

[photo from Google images]

Google yielded this article from the Art and Living section of the Chicago Tribune—February 18, 1987 Pudding is proud side dish By Lisa Anderson:
“James Herriot, Yorkshire’s beloved author-veterinarian, calls it “the most wonderful food in the world.” Most Englishmen still won’t consider a Sunday dinner complete without it. Puffy, chewy, and sublimely fattening, Yorkshire pudding remains one of the most cherished, traditional accompaniments to an English roast beef dinner. Despite its name, Yorkshire pudding is hardly what Americans would call a ‘pudding.’ Made of a batter of flour, eggs, milk, and meat drippings, if anything it looks like a spongy pita bread. Nothing soaks up gravy better than this comforting form of ‘nursery food.’
“…Yorkshire pudding was popularized in the 18th-Century England by thrifty housewives who found it a convenient way to use up the drippings from their roasts and above all, to extend a meal.
“…In modern England, Yorkshire pudding is no longer used primarily as a meat extender but is served in country inns and fine restaurants as a proud side dish, not only to its classic companion, roast beef, but also to various roast meat dishes.”

Maybe someday I’ll travel back to England and sample a chunk of Yorkshire pud with roast beef, but for now, I’ll keep my distance.

WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS POST ABOUT??

If you’re still reading, bravo—you’re a champ!

Like England’s Yorkshire pudding, every family has at least one beloved food that outsiders find unique, odd, or just plain gross. When I was growing up, ours was cream of wheat. We had it most mornings for breakfast for years. We liked to pour milk and honey on it and drink it through a straw. Yeah, I know. To this day, when I’m feeling ill, cream of wheat rescues me like nothing else can. I don’t eat—or drink—it regularly any more, but I’ll always find deep comfort in its warmth.

  

Last week I tried making a pot of cream of wheat for Jay’s and Rose’s breakfast. There were no lumps, it was creamy and sweet, annnnnd they hated it. What?? It should be written in their DNA! It’s one of the few things I could sometimes stomach when I was pregnant with them! Alas, they did not get the gene. [Google images above and below]

Check this out…cream of wheat pudding?? Yikes. Ok, ok, back to the point…

Jeff invented one of the Weird Foods of our family. A few years ago during an intense post-run calorie debt, he started mixing couscous with tuna and mayo to get more umph from a single can of tuna. I call it tunamush, all one word. He has made this goop for the kids enough times that they LOVE it, and whenever they ask for tuna and crackers, I know they mean tunamush. It took me a year or two to get my courage up enough to try the foul mixture. When I finally did sample it, I decided that while it’s not as awful as it looks, it’s still not for me. But I managed to swallow my gags to learn how to make it for Jay and Rose. I give it to them on days we’re out of bread when I don’t feel like making more, like today.

It’s warm. It’s mushy. It’s got a suspicious fishy-meaty flavor. It’s a filler-meat-extender. Can you see why I started pondering Yorkshire pudding? Glop Glob Plunk.

It’s quick and easy to make though! Put half a cup of dry couscous in a bowl. Boil about 2/3 cup of water, pour it on top, and wait 5 minutes for the couscous to absorb it and soften. Then drain a can of tuna, scrape it into the couscous with 2 plops of Miracle Whip, mix it up and there you have it. Lunch for 2 extra-hungry kids for less than a dollar.

They eat it with Wheat Thins…

…or swallow it straight down from a spoon.

And that’s the White Things’ version of Yorkshire pudding.