So Sunday was officially Yorkshire Pudding Day this week, unlike most other Sundays when people eat Yorkshire Puddings with their Sunday roast and it’s just called Sunday. A completely new made up day, but an excuse to eat one of the finest things in the world, so all is good.

Yorkshire Puddings remind me of going to my Grandma’s when I was young. I think it was on Boxing Day each year we used to go round to her house and had Yorkshire puddings, not with the main meal of Roast Beef, but as a starter on it’s own with really thin watery gravy, made only from the juice off the roast. We used to love it. The pudding itself was different too, well not a different mix, just a different shape, she used to make just one enormous flat one in something like a baking tray. Apparently this is the traditional method:

“It was originally flatter than today’s version, and was cooked in a tin beneath meat which was being roasted on a spit over a fire so it could catch all the drippings from the meat. In early days, this was as much out of necessity as anything else because the human body actually needs dietary fat to facilitate the absorption of certain vitamins. However, as sources of fat were more difficult to obtain at the time, particularly in the North of the country, the extra drippings from the meat supplied a welcome and needed supplement. It was often served before the meat perhaps with some gravy to part-fill the stomach so that less of the expensive meat would be needed. Indeed, if there wasn’t sufficient meat to go around, the children were often fed Yorkshire pudding and gravy as their main meal.” Recipes4Us.co.uk

So there you go. Very interesting.

As roast beef is now a thing of the past for me, we joined in with this new tradition with a none traditional accompaniment of Sweet Potato and Butterbean Stew. It was very nice. I think more things should be served in Yorkshire Puddings.

Sweet Potato and Butterbean Stew

• 2 tsp sunflower oil
• 2 onions thinly sliced
• 1tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp tumeric
• 1 tsp ground corriander
• 2lb sweet potato cut into chunks
• 4 celery sticks, sliced
• 8 oz carrots, sliced
• 4oz spinach
• 1 1/4 pints veg stock
• 14oz cooked butterbeans

1. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion until brown.
2. Add the mustard seeds, tumeric and ground corriander and fry for 1 minute.
3. Add potatoes, celery and carrots, cover and cook gently for 5 mins.
4. Add the stock and butterbeans. Bring to the boil,cover and simmer for 30 mins, until the veg are tender.
5. Add the spinach and stir in, when the spinach has wilted serve in Yorkshire pudding.