chapter XXV - mamon wellman cooks 11

sunday roast yorkies
"it's amazing what we take for granted is what we miss the most. Now that your no longer with us, I miss your Sunday roast"

My last blog was for mum's crispy roast potatoes, this time we are talking Yorkshire puddings. Yorkshire puddings were a must in our household. Classically an accompaniment to roast beef, my mother served them with every roast dinner regardless of the meat. My father loved them made as one large pudding (made in a large pie mould or roasting tray) and cut into portions, he also loved to take the batter and make like large savoury pancakes, one each, then he would place it on the plate and then serve the rest of the Sunday roast on top it. 

My recipe for yorkshire puddings is essentially the same as my mother's, except she never measured anything. Like all good home cooks who had done it a million times, she just new how much by sight and feel. She would simply crack in the eggs, add a dash of milk and then eough flour until she got the right consistency.

I am proud to say my recipe was listed on Google top three recipes for over five years. That is until they tweaked the way they listed search results (with paid commercial websites listed first). But for years, I was always in battle with Delia for first place.

Where did these culinary beauties originate? Like many food creations it is lost in the culinary mists of time. Apparently the first known recorded written recipe is from 1737 in the interestingly titled "Whole Duty of a Woman" and then ten years later in "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy"by Hannah Glasse; the 18th century version of Delia.

The recipe most used is equal quantities of each; flour eggs and milk. I prefer to pack mine with eggs and use the milk sparingly. But the key is to pour the mixture into red hot moulds with smoking hot fat, so lets be careful out there! This starts the cooking off straight away around the edges and forces the empty middle to happen. 

Of course these days here in the UK, most people can't be bothered making their own and have resorted to buying pre-made, frozen ones, care of Aunt 'bloody' Betty.Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!

I love making these in the pictured wide moulds and serving them for brunch filled with the likes of goulash, buttered chicken, rogan josh etc.

note - feel free to make plenty, and with the leftover spare ones, let them go cold and serve with Sunday afternoon tea with jam and clotted cream or filled with a fruit compote. 

                                                                                                                                           

recipe - cheffies yorkshire puddings

002 cup flour 

010 pc   eggs  

300 ml   milk
              lard or cooking oil

recipe - method of preparation

Melt the lard and pour a generous amount into each yorkshire pudding mould or muffin moulds. The fat/oil must totally cover the base. (a Yorkshire pudding mould is more shallow and wider, but normal muffin moulds are fine) 

Place into a pre-heated oven (200-220C) and heat until the oil is very hot (almost if not smoking). It must be hot so that the mixture must sizzle when poured in, this encourages the pudding to rise quickly on the edges, resulting in the classical hollow centre. 

Beat all the eggs together and add half the milk. Sieve in the flour and beat to a smooth batter, adding more milk if required to form an easily pourable batter (consistency of double cream) Season with salt and pepper. 

Remove the moulds from the oven and working quickly (but safely)pour in the batter until mould is full. 

Return to the hot oven and bake for approx 30 minutes until the batter is fully cooked and crisp. 

next week - mum's roast pork with cracklin ....... 

chapter XXV - mamon wellman cooks 10

sunday roast potatoes
"it's amazing what we take for granted is what we miss the most. Now that your no longer with us, I miss your Sunday roast"

Sunday's was always roast day for the Wellman whanau. We would invariably wake up to mum scurrying around in the kitchen, and the aroma of a roast dinner already cooking. Breakfast was never a big deal in our household, so we would probably just grab some toast while we waited for our Sunday dinner; umm, I mean lunch. Mum loved her Sunday roast, as we all did. We all loved the food and the way she cooked it, but for mum it was more than that. It was an institution not to be messed with. 

When I was growing up in Wales, we were big church goers. Well us kids were. Every Sunday morning we would be appropriately attired, "in our Sunday best" and myself and my two sisters would be sent packing to morning service, with a penny clutched tightly in our hands to put in the collection box. We would often go to afternoon Sunday school as well. To this day I can still recite the New Testament books in order. It wasn't until we were adults, mum confessed that the main reason for us going was so that her and dad could have some alone time!

The meat varied; roast chicken, pot roast beef, roast lamb or roast pork. But what never varied was that we always had Yorkshire pudding with it, there was always two vegetables and always, "no one makes 'em like mum' crispy roast potatoes. Mint sauce was not reserved just for roast lamb, mum loved it with her roast beef too.

One of the vegetables that we had, more often than not was cauliflower. Mum would always buy a fresh cauliflower (frozen vegetables were a luxury item back then) and cook both the florets and any outer green leaves or stems with it. She would cook them until very soft and then mash the two together. This was delicious when lavished with mum's thick, roast gravy. Cauliflower puree seems to be quite a trendy item these days, again our mum was decades ahead of the game ;-)

roast potatoes

I say no one makes roast potatoes like our mum, and no one did. But it seems every TV chef is now using her recipe and knows her secrets. It took 30+ years, but the world is finally catching up with my mother's cuisine. This recipe is basically how mum would have done it, with a few extra tweaks from myself

secret number one   - make sure you pick a good floury potato for them; desiree, king edwards, maris piper or my personal favourite Agria, that have a lovely yellow flesh (see picture) to them and end up looking really golden in colour when cooked. 

secret number two   - use a good animal fat; dripping, lard, goose or duck fat. My mother always used a rendered pork fat (lard) made by our local butcher. 

secret number three - boil the potatoes with the potato peelings. The peel hold an immense amount of flavour, that is imparted into the potatoes as they cook

secret number four   - roughen the potato edges, to encourage crispening

secret number five    - sprinkle the potatoes with a little flour (or semolina if your feeling flush) 

                                                                                                                                           

recipe - cheffies roast potatoes a la mamon

012 pc  potatoes 
200 gm pork fat  (or duck/goose fat if you prefer)

recipe - method of preparation

Place the roasting tray with the fat in, into a pre-heated oven (200 - 220C) it must be hot, hot, hot. 

Wash well, peel and cut into even sized pieces. Rinse well and place into cold salted water and simmer gently until the potatoes are cooked; to the point of almost falling apart. Drain the potatoes into a wide colander. Give them a little shake to break up the potato's surface a little, so the surface looks fluffy (this broken surface is what will crispen) Allow to steam and dry out. 

notes

• placing the boiled potatoe on a tray and sprinkling with a little flour or fine semolina, will really aid crispening
• for maximum flavour, boil the potatoes along with the peel (which can be wrapped in muslin if you have it to make for easy removal), this adds that real potato flavour punch

Carefully remove the hot roasting tray from the oven and carefully place in the potatoes; ensuring they really sizzle, (do not over crowd the pan)  if not remove the first potato and continue to heat the fat. 

When all the potatoes are in, use a large spoon and baste the potatoes all over. Or place the roasting tray over a high heat and turn the potatoes to fry all the edges (or fry and baste). This will seal the outside and help prevent the final potato being too greasy inside

Place into the oven and roast until golden, crisp and cooked (turning potatoes as required), approx 1 hour. 

next week - mum's yorkshire's puddings .......