abbikeboard.com

As im from the UK, Carla decided to try out some recipes from England to make me feel at home over here..
Apart from a Good old fashioned Curry (which has replaced the more traditional Fish and chips (fries)) she decided to try her hands at a Sunday Roast favorite.. Yorkshire Pudding..
Its not a pudding, but a thin pancake mix thats roasted in the oven.. Normally the drippings from the roast beef are used as the cooking medium but oil can be used instead.. the Major issue is that it does take practice and the eggs and flour and altitude over here all take their actions.. Google it and you will see what its supposed to look like..
Her first attempt looked more like beer glass coasters and I didn't have the heart to tell her what they should be as she had never seen it before.. 8 of 10 for taste but..
Once she saw my mother making them back in Blighty, she realized that something had gone wrong and eventually sussed out was it was..
anyway, once mastered, you can create large round bowl shaped ones and fill it with Brunswick stew for those colder nights or as a side for Sunday roast or thanksgiving Dinner etc..

INGREDIENTS
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp melted butter
2 eggs, beaten*
2-4 Tbsp of roast drippings

the important thing is air.. Beat the mixture well.. Like pancakes, the more air, the more it will rise.. Carla often adds a little beer to help at our 2,700ft ASL..

Here is a general recipe that should be ok for most areas..

1 Sift together the flour and salt in a large bowl. Form a well in the center. Add the milk, melted butter, and eggs and beat until the batter is completely smooth (no lumps), the consistency of whipping cream. Let sit for an hour. (Optional but does make a difference to its sucess)
2 Heat oven to 450°F. Add roast drippings to a 9x12-inch pyrex or ceramic casserole dish, coating the bottom of the dish. Heat the dish in the oven for 10 minutes.
For a popover version you can use a popover pan or a muffin pan, putting at least a teaspoon of drippings in the bottom of each well, and place in oven for just a couple minutes.

3 Carefully pour the batter into the pan (or the wells of muffin/popover pans, filling just 1/3 full), once the pan is hot. Cook for 15 minutes at 450°F, then reduce the heat to 350°F and cook for 15 to 20 more minutes, until puffy and golden brown.
Cut into squares to serve. Serves 6.

Its a fairly unusual taste but it does take on the flavour of the beef drippings or the Gravy..
Cheers..

Pete

Strange foods you Brits eat. Bangers and mash, Yorkshire pudding that isn't pudding, fish and chips, Welsh Rarebit? Every time I watch Gordon Ramsey on TV I wonder what his food tastes like. I never even heard of risotto (I know, it's Italian) till I watched Hell's Kitchen.

:-) You haven't lived till you have tried Steak and Kidney Pie and chips (fries) , or Black Pudding.. If you can keep your cookies with that, then you truly have a cast iron stomach :-)
Oddly. a lot of people say British food is bland. I suppose its an acquired taste .. I cant get Bacon like I like over here.. The Bacon here is known as Back to streaky bacon and it tends to be served cremated or very crispy.. I prefer mine like, is suppose, canadian bacon and not fatty or crisp.
Welsh Rarebit is very tasty.. If you like cheese then the stronger the better.. a Good sharp Cheddar cut into slices placed onto Toasted Bread, sprinkled with a little paprika or cayenne pepper, a couple of splashes of Worcestershire (pronounced Woostershire) sauce, and then put under the grill till the cheese melts and bubbles.. Yummeeeeee

Another Variant, I suppose, is Cheese Dreams. Its called all sorts of things but the way I remember it from Scout camp was taking bread, placing a slice of cheese on it and then putting it in the frying pan with a little oil.. Fry the one side only till crisp..

Fried bread is often served with bacon and eggs for breakfast.. used to mop up the egg :-)

Next time the sunday roast is cooking.. and an apple pie is being made, take the trimmed pastry from the pie lid.. Ball it up and place it in the pan that has the beef or joint in. Let it roast in the beef drippings..

Cheers..
Pete

BTW, there is a Recipe forum on this site if you'd like to post that recipe again.