Aubergine & Eggplant

The Perfect Yorkshire Pudding

It was with a great amount of giggling that I read Tim Hayward's blog post about the science of Yorkshire pudding creation, as I too have spent time in a PR agency and know the kind of 'research' quoted in press releases... generally a quick shout around the office for favourite holiday destinations, restaurants in London or whatever.

So I decided to test out this proper scientific answer to the best Yorkshire pudding and I have to say it was minimum fuss, close to nothing ingredient-wise and excellent results. I would use even less fat than I did this time, which was about a tablespoon per muffin cup, and be patient. Really really wait 10-15 minutes. I couldn't handle the pressure and caved after barely 10 minutes and didn't get quite the requisite height.

Here you are, reposted in the name of science:

The Royal Society of Chemistry Yorkshire Pudding 

Ingredients

Tablespoon and a half of plain flour

1 egg

Half milk, half water to make a thin batter

Half a teaspoon of salt.

Method

Put flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle, add the egg, stir until the two are combined then start gradually adding the milk and water combining as you go.

Add the liquid until the batter is a smooth and thin consistency.

Stir in half teaspoon of salt and leave to stand for 10 minutes

Put beef dripping into Yorkshire pudding tins or into one large tin but don't use too much fat.

Put into hot oven until the fat starts to smoke.

Give the batter a final stir and pour into the tin or tins.

Place in hot oven until well risen - should take 10 to 15 minutes.

Three ingredients, two pots

One pot, if you can manage to cook rice in a frying pan. Personally, I wouldn’t go there. You’d have to take the rice out to cook the beef anyway, so that would be one pot and a bowl. Forget it, two pots.

We called this Hamburger and Rice when I was growing up. No cutsey euphemisms and actually none needed. It’s straight on comfort food.  It’s simple, nutritious, and any kid will eat this – promise.

It's ground beef [mince], tomato sauce, and rice, that's it. Put the rice on, and while it’s cooking, brown the beef. Add Italian seasoning and the tomato sauce to the beef and simmer a bit, and then add the cooked rice when it’s ready. Proportions are to your own taste, I like it a bit on the runny side. No ‘eeeuuuw’; wait till you taste it.

These days I use extra lean ground beef and yesterday, fearing that I had found a way to screw up the simplest recipe on earth, I used brown rice. Sigh. H& R for dinner and the world tilted back into place- I’ll bet you were wondering why that had happened. 

When I was growing up it was one of the few things we would eat on Hallowe’en night. And you had to eat before you could put your costume on and go begging for candy from the neighbours. It was a Mom Rule. No running up and down people’s walks dressed like a pumpkin until you’d had your dinner.

The other good thing about H&R is that I got to pass on “ the method” to Erin.
The right way to eat it. When you’re little it always seems to arrive on your plate way too hot to eat. And because you’re little, you are really, really hungry. Dilemma.

The trick is to flatten it out on your plate till it’s almost level and then make “roads” in it with your carrot sticks. Straight across one way and then back across at an angle, and then you can make a bunch of shorter ones if you’re really getting into municipal planning.

By the time you’ve done this with enough care to keep the rice bits from falling off the plate, it’s cool enough to start eating around the edges of your roads. Erin watched in complete fascination the first time I showed her this. Big brown eyes looking at me in amazement; license to play with food.

When I’ve eaten too much rich food or just eaten out too often and crave something simple, this is at the top of my list. Well right under sushi. And steak.

Warm Lemon Curd Pudding

Today has been a thoroughly ugly day outside in London. It's felt like 7pm, even at noon, and the rain has been dumping down all day. I came home and spent an age practising the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante.

So it's time for a warm sunny lemon pudding.

My mum used to make this for me when I was little, and she had another name for it, but the Brit version I came across is called Lemon Self-Saucing Pudding. Which sounds a bit disgusting to me... more like a DIY caulking gun than the light and fluffy thing with tart curd nestling at the bottom. Recipe after the bump.

Fresh

Historically speaking, I have always hated peas. In company I will swallow whatever ends up on my fork, but in private I have no trouble dedicating whatever time it takes to pry little green pellets out of a frozen dinner before I put it in the microwave.

So snow peas [mange-tout] were an abject lesson in "never say never"  for me, and the first sugar snap pea was an even more embarrassing crow-eating event.They are both divine. Who knew?

When snow peas were suddenly available only in little plastic envelopes shipped all the way from China, I stopped buying them. Sad. And incomprehensible. Snow peas are so easy to grow, why don't we have local ones?

In protest I planted my own this summer, both snow peas and sugar snaps. And on the why-stop-there principle, I also planted spinach (yum, green teeth), scarlet runner beans, carrots, tomatoes and zucchini. My luck ran out after the beans, but never mind.

With very little effort of my own, I had vegetables. Sweet, tender, spinach – enough to share with friends. Beans big enough to hold up a tent. And oh my gawd the peas. On my knees, religious experience, this is what we're supposed to be eating, peas. Humbling, move me to say thank you to the pea vines, peas.There is only one word I can think of to describe how they actually tasted– fresh.

I'd take a picture, but I've eaten them all.

Autumn fish stew

Sometimes in the dark days of early November, when I'm still getting used to the early nights and digging for scarves and toques at the back of the hall closet, I find myself eating loads of red meat. I crave the substansial nature of a bit of seared cow.

I have to take myself by the hand and go to the fish section, though nothing ever looks hefty enough for those cold winter evenings.

Enter the humble fish stew.

I had two halibut steaks sitting in my freezer, ordered in a moment of halibut-ambivalence amnesia from those nice Ocado people. Hence why they've been lurking there ever since.

A half-hearted recipe search later, and I came up with this Sophie Grigson recipe. I wasn't initially convinced, as the tomatoes looked like they'd give me heartburn and it sounded slightly boring and labour intensive to boot. But after some improvised tweakage (you want me to dry orange peel for HOW many days??), it was incredible. Recipe after the bump.