The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Yorkshire puddings are perfect thing to keep this ‘marauding Scotsman’ happy
L bornast Sunday was Yorkshire Pudding Day. It’s Yorkshire Pudding Day every first Sunday of February. It was kind of special for the Doyenne, and brought up in Bradford and a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire girl. As a sentimental supper she made Yorkshire puddings with onion gravy – just as her mother used to. I toasted her cooking skills with a glass of whisky to even up the gastronomic balance.
Scots cooks and Yorkshire cooks have long traditions of thrift and resourcefulness. The Doyenne tells a rather disrespectful story about the origins of Yorkshire pudding. The tradition – she says - is that in days long past the Yorkshire pudding was put on the table and eaten first and the joint of beef held back in case marauding Scots came by and stole the meat. I don’t go for that explanation as we resourceful Scots had a habit of coming back the way we had gone and mopping up what we had missed.
But her story has a basis in fact. Yorkshire pudding was an ideal meal for less well-off families with hungry stomachs to fill. It was originally served as a starter to make the Sunday joint go further which is where the old Yorkshire saying “Them ‘at eats t’most pudding gets t’most meat” comes from. Yorkshire folk are full of these little bon mots as I’ve often noticed with the Doyenne.
She used to take me to a marvellous pub outside Bradford called the Rock and Heifer which served enormous individual boat-shaped Yorkshire puddings swimming in onion gravy, and rolls filled with slices of hot, pink roast beef carved on the bar from a huge joint. To the accompaniment of a pint of Sam Smith’s ale, it was a meal fit for – well, a marauding Scotsman. The drive there by the Egypt road via the Walls of Jericho added to the atmosphere of cheerful anticipation.
But for thrift, what can beat haggis, culmination of Scottish gastronomic versatility. Oatmeal, beef suet and the liver, lights and heart (the pluck) of a sheep, a large ingin (onion) sliced small, seasoned well and all sewn up in a sheep’s stomach. A prime example of waste not, want not, as my father used to ding into me and my sister.
The snow reveals the tracks of wildlife closer to the village than I would normally expect. This may be partly due to less traffic because of lockdown, although there are still as many dogs and dogwalkers as ever. I’ve never seen rabbits or hares in the field across the road where we exercise Inka most mornings but their tracks are there now. They will be foraging further afield as the snow is covering so much of the soft stems of grass and vegetation that they prefer.
The last time Inka and I walked round Fasque Lake it was practically frozen over. A small piece of open water at the top of the lake was crowded with mallard duck and a pair of mute swans with four cygnets still showing the last of their grey-brown adolescent plumage. A solitary buzzard circled round the woods mewing plaintively. It was probably hungry. Their varied diet includes small mammals such as mice and shrews, earthworms and insects, small rabbits and also carrion. The snow had covered all of these food sources too except rabbits and perhaps partridge and pigeons if they can catch them.
Several years ago when there was a lot of snow lying, much like this year, as Inka and I walked past a small wood a buzzard fell out of a tree in front of us, stone dead. It was as light as a feather (forgive me) when I picked it up and its breastbone was like a knife edge. It had died of starvation.
There was great excitement at the weekend. Four long-tailed tits descended on the peanut feeder and stayed with us for about half an hour. In the eight years we’ve lived in our present home this is only the second time we’ve had a visit from these delightful birds. Feathered lollipops, I call them, and they are quite one of my favourite small songbirds.
They are really birds of the woodland verges and would have been driven into the garden due to a shortage of their normal food. Their visit was all too short but they are quite nomadic in wintertime so I guess they just kept on travelling, always on the hunt for food. Like the garden songbirds, they don’t build up fat reserves to see them through the winter months so they must forage almost non-stop in the daylight hours to maintain body heat through the long nights.
As a liturgical aside to finish with if you missed the Yorkshire pudding cholesterol fix, next Tuesday is Shrove Tuesday, otherwise Pancake Tuesday. I look forward to the Doyenne’s wafer-thin pancakes, smothered in salted butter, folded in four with a squeeze of lemon juice and a shaking of sugar. Sublime.
A solitary buzzard circled the woods mewing plaintively