Monday's Mouthwatering Memories

I often get to thinking about some of the dishes my grandmother used to prepare, especially the desserts - or as we called 'em "puddings". Her mother, my great grandmother, had taught her to cook. Great grandmother had been a cook for the owners and workers at a large Yorkshire farm, her talent, among the family anyway, was legendary. She would have had easy access to the best of everything, all fresh and grown, reared or preserved "on the spot". Not that good ingredients are all that's needed - a little "magic" helps too.

My grandmother must have been a good student. She also had access to good quality ingredients, living as she did in a tiny rural village, farms all around, with her own and neighbours' large gardens providing vegetables and fruits; berries were abundant in the hedgerows at certain times of the year, wild blackberries/brambles, wild raspberries. Strawberry fields were just down the road, where villagers could "pick their own" . Some village people kept chickens, some kept, or shared the upkeep of a couple of pigs.

 Something like this

For most of her life, Grandma had no fridge, no gas or electric stove. She cooked using the small oven at one side of the huge black fireplace, heated by the coal fire in the hearth. At the other side was a container for water, also heated by the fire. The big fireplace had to be "black-leaded" regularly to keep it shining. During the few weeks, or days, of the year when it was too hot for a fire, a minimum of cooking was done, using an oil stove, sometimes two, in the "wash-house" in the yard. She knew her coal-fired oven so intimately that she could gauge the required heat just by "feel", even for such delicacies as Yorkshire Pudding which can stand or fall (literally) by cooking in the wrong heat.

I've digressed. I'd meant to write about some favourite remembered desserts.

Grandma often made what she called "Egg Pudding". I've never seen it on any menu or in any cookbook. It has, I suppose, to be a near relation of Yorkshire Pudding. It was an egg, milk and flour thick batter wrapped in a cloth, to form a big round ball, then boiled (I think - or steamed?) in the cloth, in a pan of water. When ready it was unwrapped, cut open and a huge piece of fresh farm butter and lots of sugar inserted before sharing among mouthwatering diners.

Her classic Yorkshire puddings were superb. On Sunday the big "Yorkshire", baked in a special rectangular tin, was served first, before the main course, with lovely gravy made from juices of the joint of beef. Sometimes there'd be thinly sliced cucumber in vinegar as an accompaniment. Grandma would certainly never entertain those, now popular, silly little individual Yorkshire puds! If there was ever any pud left over it would be eaten eagerly with butter and sugar later.

Apple suet dumpling was another favourite dessert when visiting Grandma: sliced apples from local trees sweetened and wrapped in a cloak of suet pastry (something I've not tasted for many decades) then, not baked, but again, boiled in a cloth. Scrumptious with copious amounts of custard. I've always loved a good vanilla custard!

At blackberry time, her "bramble cake" was always a family favourite. We'd go picking the berries, bring them back to her and within an hour or so the "cake" would be ready. It was a kind of pie, but instead of being baked in a tin, a circle of pastry was simply wrapped around the brambles and sealed with egg and milk, placed on a flat tray on the oven shelf. When ready, a piece was cut from the top of the "cake" and a lump of fresh butter inserted.

Around this time of year Grandma always made some special ginger bread, known in some circles as Yorkshire Parkin; hers was lovely and moist, rich, and baked in a big square tin, then cut into small squares. It went down a treat while watching the bonfires and fireworks of Guy Fawkes night: November 5th.

Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings were always made weeks, maybe months before the event. Very rich, moist fruit cake, lovingly wrapped in cloths, stored in the front room sideboard, fed regularly with rum, brandy or whisky, whichever was to hand, injecting same with a sterilised knitting needle.
Almond paste covering and sugar icing came much later.

A favourite for all seasons, for me, was her chocolate cake...yummm...what can I say? Hers was of a texture colour and flavour I haven't found anywhere else since, and I've always been searching!

These thoughts are likely to put an inch on my waistline! Does any passing reader have good memories to share of deliciousnesses from their youth or childhood?