Some folks may remember my commenting on “Grandma’s Kitchen” last time I was in Orlando:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/grandmas-kitchen-with-food-like-moms/
Well, after “The Night Of The Fleabag” hotel, I decided to reward myself (for surviving ;-) with Sunday Roast. They have a special Sunday dinner from noon to about 4 pm that is a traditional English Sunday Roast. My Mom would put a slow roast in the oven, then we would go to church. About 3 hours later, home from church, we had dinner (as the ‘largest meal of the day’) at about 12:30 to 1 pm (depending on when the minister got done… you can bet I was “eyes on” the clock waiting for him to finish!)
While we usually had beef (as Dad was from Iowa and liked beef more) some times it was lamb (as Mom and I loved lamb). Well, you get your choice of meat at Grandma’s Kitchen. I chose lamb. I couldn’t resist getting a couple of fork fulls “down the old hatch” prior to thinking of taking a picture, so “some bits are missing” ;-) (See the ‘fork marks’ in this side of the Mashed Potatoes ;-)
It’s a giant plate (platter, really) of lamb, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, carrots, cabbage, and under the Yorkshire Pudding, some roast potatoes. Oh, and a tub of extra gravy in the background.
Yorkshire pudding, for you Americans and others who don’t know it, is a kind of puff pastry like a fluffy bun… not sweet like desert pastry, but not like yeast breads either. Smother in gravy and go. (They kept offering me more, so I think you can have several of them if you like, but I only barely finished the meal as it was, leaving a bit of mashed on the plate… having a couple of more Yorkshire Puddings would have been way too much for me… and I’m 100 kg, or 220 lbs or just shy of 16 Stone (if I did the math right ;-)
Sunday Roast of Lamb
In the background you can see the bottomless glass of iced tea. After a suitable time had passed (most of a BBC Top Gear episode on the TV over the desert counter…) I was able to contemplate desert. I went for Apple Pie with Custard.
This is not American Apple Pie. Americans make pie that is terribly sweet. Then dump a load of cinnamon in it too. Might as well put it on toast and call it a breakfast pastry. Americans will be disappointing in this pie and want to dump sugar on it. Me? It’s like a pie my Mother used to make. You can taste the Apples. It is an Apple pie, not a cinnamon flavored Sugar Pie over apple slices… Similarly, the custard is not American Sweet. It is a rich creamy English Custard. ( I got to wait 5 minutes while it was made fresh… they do that…) I loved it. A nice pie that lets you taste the apples and custard. If you want a Sugar Shot for desert, look elsewhere. If you want real subtle flavors of proper English desert, this is for you.
Apple Pie with English Custard
Dinner runs about $11.50 (regular lunch specials are about $6) and adding desert and the iced tea brought it all up to just under $20 (including tax). IIRC, the pie was a bit under $5 with topping. Iced tea was about $2.
One of the best deals I’ve found on a real honest meal of wonderful food, “just like home”, and as I waddled out, definitely plenty of quantity…
I picked up one of their cards, and will add some information from it, once I find where I put it ;-) For now, just realize that if you are in Orlando on a Sunday, and want a real honest English Sunday Dinner, you know where to get it.
One caveat: Normally as the seasonal demand runs down, they stop making the Sunday Dinner about late June. (As it gets hot, fewer folks order the large meal). This year, as was commented by the owner, they’ve kept making it “as demand has been high”. So if you want to keep it around all summer, just keep ordering it… I know I will. When you are ‘living on the road’, finding a place that has food that’s “like home” is very special. There’s a lot of places with great “commercial food”, and lots of places with fancier food, but there is something very special about “real food”…
Musings from the Chiefio 
There is nothing like that around where I live, however where I live there is plenty of that, but I have to do it myself. Wow, I’ve had Yorkshire Pudding many times, and didn’t know that’s what it was. I split it and buttered it up…
Thanks, E.M.
Is it similar to spoon bread (the Yorkshire Pudding)? I love the stuff but it is so hard to find. At least the good stuff. Fortunately I do not live too far from Colonial Williamsburg where it is a staple at the restaurants there.
@Bennett In Vermont:
Yorkshire Pudding is a ‘drippings pudding’. The nature of it has changed over time, becoming more fluffy and pastry like and less “pudding” like over the decades. The history section from the wiki kind of describes it:
When wheat flour began to come into common use for making cakes and puddings, cooks in the north of England devised a means of making use of the fat that dropped into the dripping pan to cook a batter pudding while the meat roasted in the oven. In 1737 a recipe for ‘a dripping pudding’ was published in The Whole Duty of a Woman:
Similar instructions were published in 1747 in The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse under the title of ‘Yorkshire pudding’. It was she who re-invented and renamed the original version, called Dripping Pudding, which had been cooked in England for centuries, although these puddings were much flatter than the puffy versions known today.
A 2008 ruling by the Royal Society of Chemistry has it that “A Yorkshire pudding isn’t a Yorkshire pudding if it is less than four inches tall”.
The Yorkshire pudding is a staple of the British Sunday lunch and in some cases is eaten as a separate course prior to the main meat dish. This was the traditional method of eating the pudding and is still common in parts of Yorkshire today. Because the rich gravy from the roast meat drippings was used up with the first course, the main meat and vegetable course was often served with a parsley or white sauce.
Traditionally, though less so now, the Yorkshire Pudding could be served as a sweet, with sugar or even with orange juice as a sauce.
So you can serve it savory or sweet, but it’s intended to be sauced. I like it with gravy, but one could consider melted butter to be a sauce ;-)
@PhilJourdan:
This particular Y.P. is more like a puff pastry without sugar. Spoon Bread is supposed to be a cornbread, is it not? Y.P. is all wheat.
When Yorkshire pudding is right it is fantastic. Unfortunately 90% of what you get in restaurants is a soggy travesty (apologies to Kevin Trenberth).
Now I am going to have to make the trip down 192 to find “Grandma’s Kitchen”.
That looked like a great meal. I love lamb, but its not served that common and when it is it is a bit expensive. I live in sheep country and its expensive here too. We need government to step in and regulate that! (LOL)
I can honestly say I never have had Yorkshire pudding.
Lamb is young sheep, mutton older sheep right? Or is it goat? I get confused on that. Sure looks good though. About the only way I can eat peas is with mashed potatoes. Mixed up with a nice savory gravy…mmm
RalphB
Yes, mutton is older sheep. But if you tenderstretch and age in a coldroom for about a week it shouldn’t be any tougher than lamb and have more flavour . Mind you we farm kill for this.
I’ve never heard yorkshire pudding described as a puff pastry before. When I make it I use exactly the same recipe as for pancakes on shrove Tuesday. While I would normally have it with roast beef, I loved it as a kid served for dessert with golden syrup. Happy days.
@Bloke down the pub:
Yes, it ought to be made like a pancake batter (it ought to be a batter bread soaked in pan drippings) especially made “old style”. The commercial stuff is often made more “puffy” (note the wiki above about “4 inches high”… ) and less like a batter bread. Best description I could think of was that analogy (but in reality, it isn’t quite that either… How do you say “it isn’t sweet like a real puff pastry, but doesn’t have the texture of a yeast bread, yet is sort of like a dinner roll in shape, but only if made ‘old style’ is it like a batter bread, while the newer ‘style’ has a heavier texture sort of like a puff pastry, but not quite…”
If I had one complaint it would be that the Yorkshire pudding was more in that “commercial” style than in the old “batter bread soaked in pan drippings” style. I’d rather it were more like a dumpling soaked in pan drippings than a non-sweet pastry with a layer of gravy, but time has moved on leaving behind that “old way”, at least anywhere I’ve tried.
If you know of somewhere to get it “old style”, I’d love to know.
@Ralph B:
Lamb is to veal as
sheep is to beef.
Goat tastes a lot like lamb, only stronger. I love the taste of roast goat…
@GallopingCamel:
Well, I’d have to put this Y.P. into the 90% group. It’s not the “old style” you are thinking of, but the newer more commercial style. Still, I love most any bread soaked in good gravy ;-) This one was not soggy, but also more like a plain bit of pastry. Still, I liked it. (But would not rave over it… the lamb and spuds I’d rave over ;-)
@BobN:
Many Middle Eastern restaurants have lamb at reasonable prices.
An English Apple Pie!!!! So THAT is what GrandMa and Mom made (The English/Lebonese side of my genetics) We used our own apples, Late Northern Spies, a nice tart apple instead of a mushy eating apple like a Mac (I hate macs) and added only a dash of sugar plus a bit of lemon juice. Then the pie was baked only long enough to brown the crust so the apples still had a bit of a crunch but were not ‘raw’
You are correct EM American pies are a bland sugary mess in comparison. I am always very disappointed when I make the mistake of ording Apple pie in a restaurant.
Sounds like Sunday Roast when I was growing up in Essex… Yum! Back then Lamb was cheaper than Beef, all the way from New Zealand. I missed the Apple Pie too, although the custard was often thick (I prefer thin and runny) and like Blancmanage (yuck) .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blancmange
@E. M. – Spoon Bread is indeed made from corn. But after reading your response to Bennett, it is not the same. Probably descended from the same English meal (the colonials just modified it because they had lots of corn, not much wheat).
My father’s yorkshire granny used to say, “Them us eats most pudding, gets most meat”. Times were hard and of course little stomachs filled with pudding didn’t have room for much meat.
Ralph B says:
25 June 2013 at 8:58 am
Lamb is young sheep, mutton older sheep right? Or is it goat? I get confused on that…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lamb is young sheep ~ 50lbs live weight or less. Mutton is old sheep or old goats. Meat from older goats is also called chevon. Cabrito or capretto, is from kids (young goats) Goat meat is the most widely eaten ‘red’ meat.
(I just had another lamb born two days ago. This ewe lamb is pure black.
with lamb, you really need some mint sauce!
The individual YP seen in the picture looks exactly like what my Mother fixed for Sunday breakfast and called popovers. Ingredients the same, according to wife #1, who was quite skilled in the kitchen and made the traditional flattish YP. If yiu’ve never had YP with a roast, you are in for a real wonderful dining experience. Whenever folks go off about British cooking, I mention YP and the more experienced nod and quiet down.
Tom Bakewell, survivor of canned English peas
My mouth is watering just looking at your pictures. My kind of apple pie too.
looks at Verity…but no mint sauce for the lamb?
Mint is for peas.
That would cost double, here in Broome, West Australia, YP goes even better with roast beef …
Another Ian…you “farm kill for that” meaning it’s so good you would kill another farmer for it or that you give Shawn a close shave on the farm? I assume the latter but if it’s the former…can I get a dinner invite?
I am not a big fan of mutton as it has that funky taint to it. I have had roasted goat (I am in the ME and its a staple here), but the best way was in a clay pot buried in some coals with various spices. Finger licking (right hand fingers) good, especially with saffron rice.
Graeme No.3 – Mint is for peas? never heard of it. But then I do not like peas, so anything would improve their flavor.
The canned English peas I recall were like little musket balls ‘preserved’ with spearmint. Regardless of how long they were cooked they never softened up. I guess it was rigor mortis. The sound they made as they were poured into a saucepan was quite distinct.
Aaah the peas. The ‘english’ peas or processed peas are usually mature, dried peas which are rehydrated and then canned. Totally different animal to the young green peas more readily available in the US.
In New Zealand, they have different definitions for lamb. Generally, it is under a year old with no permanent incisor teeth. When the teeth come through, it becomes hogget. Once they get the second set of incisor teeth, it becomes mutton.
Hogget is very popular – you get bigger cuts and they have more flavour.
Your meal is almost like I used to have every Sunday when growing up. To be a true sheep meal, it should be mint sauce instead of gravy. It was even better when home made. Chopped up winter mint, with hot water, brown sugar and malt vinegar added to taste.Yorkshire puds were always for the beef gravy.
And to flavour the apple pies, blackberry was the desired fruit in season
The only addition I can make to this thread is to say Toad in the hole.
ChrisM says:
27 June 2013 at 7:46 am
In New Zealand, they have different definitions for lamb. Generally, it is under a year old with no permanent incisor teeth. When the teeth come through, it becomes hogget. Once they get the second set of incisor teeth, it becomes mutton.
Hogget is very popular – you get bigger cuts and they have more flavour…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
HMMMmmmm, I have a couple of wethers (one goat one sheep) who are about to turn a year old, so they should be good eating…..
Bloke down the pub says:
27 June 2013 at 10:12 am
The only addition I can make to this thread is to say Toad in the hole.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AHHhhh a spicer version of pigs in a blanket.
@E.M.:Missing you cooking up a new post!
‘Pigs in a blanket’? Another example of two nations separated by a common tongue? In the UK, pigs in a blanket are a small sausage wrapped in bacon. They most often get served as an accompaniment to the Christmas turkey. Not that there’s usually much room on the plate by that stage but you can squeeze a couple in somewhere. A wafer thin mint Mr Creosote?
Bloke down the pub says:
28 June 2013 at 3:43 pm
‘Pigs in a blanket’? Another example of two nations separated by a common tongue? In the UK, pigs in a blanket are a small sausage wrapped in bacon…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Pigs-in-a-blanket is also available here in the USA usually as an appetizer. However the dough wrapped small hot dog or small sausage has become a commercially available item. link
Speaking of appetizers, one favorite of mine is to take a large fresh mushroom and remove the stem. In the hollow left stuff it with your favorite raw sausage (Cooked first in a skillet) and place on a cookie sheet cover with a slice of your favorite hard cheese (optional). Cook in a slow oven until the cheese melts and the mushroom starts to brown.
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
So what did you make for dinner?
Reservations!
In my book, it’s not a roast dinner if you haven’t got roast potatoes. The best mint sauce I’ve had uses balsamic vinegar instead of malt.
@Peter Dunford:
Forgot to mention… in the picture, the mint sauce is in the little silver bowl like thing…
@Adolfo:
Two tonight… and adding ‘infrastructure’ to get back to normal “real soon now” ;-)
@All:
Very interesting food comments, but I’m a bit rushed to respond to them all. Did read though!
As I am from Yorkshire, I would commend Yorkshire puddings to your readers, basic pancake batter just a bit thicker, grease the pan with meat dripping and heat, add pancake mix and 25 minutes later you have the perfect pud, very easy and generally fool proof. You need a hot oven. Legend has it that Yorkshire puds were served as a starter with gravy as it was a cheap way of filling you up if the meat course was a little scarce, indeed this is how it was served at home in the olden days.
For perfect pastry, try this
Mix up half fat to flour (eg 400grams of flour to 200 grams fat) a little salt. For the fat it is imperative that you use a mix of lard and butter. Add water til it becomes a stiff dough. Put it the fridge for at least an hour. The roll out and make whatever takes your fancy.
I forgot to say….use plain flour for both and leave the Yorkshire pud batter for about an hour before cooking, giving it an occasional good beating.
pauline, thanks for the directions on how to make a real Yorkshire pud.
@Gail: it is unfortunate but true that commercialized Yorkshire pudding has turned it into a thin dinner roll, when the original is a savory rich pan bread. My only real complaint about Sunday roast is thecommercialized Yorkshire pudding.
@Pauline:
Your directions are much likke my mum used.
Sorry, I’m late. Got side tracted, but here goes.
On Living
Friday, July 19, 2013
6:31 AM
Just thinking about my family. My predecessors and they lived. For sure life wasn’t easy, however they seemed to live relatively stress free and natural. By that I mean most were gardeners. To be sure there was hard labor involved in tilling, hoeing, weeding, harvesting and storing.
I can think of a half a dozen that lived into their 90’s at a time when the life expectancy was half of that. Was this just good genetics or a combination of good genetics and good habits? Well my great granddad lived until 92 I think. He dipped, chewed, smoked, drank a glass of strong wine most everyday and gardened.
My guess id that gardening not only provides fresh nourishing food for about five months of the year (we live in the south), but the daily exercise cleanses the body, strengthens the heart and lungs. One additional benefit I have experienced is the reduction in stress. There is something about the somewhat mindless tasks of hoeing, weeding and watering that is therapudic. Then there is the reward..the harvest. I experience considerable pleasure from picking a bucket of tomatoes or squash or cucumbers and eating them fresh out of the garden. Again, very rewarding to have something in your hands that is the culmination of your labor unlike so many of our jobs that are basically repetitious and never ending. There really is little joy in moving a stack of files from one side of my desk to the other.
Back to the family…as I said we’re from the South and the women were southern cooks. Back in the day there was no Crisco or Mazola, only lard. Meals consisted of fried chicken, fried or mashed potatoes, chicken fried steak, salt port, ham and garden fresh veggies when in season. That which was not eaten, was canned or preserved. Meats were preserved with salt, drying, canning or smoking. According to modern diets, that food was terrible, but man it was good.
These people were born from the 1880’s to the 1920’s. In other words, they endured tremendous hardships, but they didn’t stress. I can remember, as a child, the old folks giving sincere thanks. They appreciated the bounty set before them.
One of my grandpa’s rode horseback until he was in his late fifties of maybe early sixties when he bought a new Ford PU. I think that was in 1960. I can remember him shifting gears at low speed, arriving into third with the truck lugging along until it smoothed out with enough RPM.
Great Granddad had an old Dodge pre-war that he drove until the family took his keys, probably in the mid fifties. To my knowledge, he didn’t wear glasses so his vision was good, but he did drive too slow.
To be sure, most had little money, no TV, modest homes, a few acres, but they had all they needed and they lived without the stresses we face today, especially the damn cell phone. They relaxed…I can remember sitting on the porch in the old swing or under the oaks on a hot summer day with a glass of iced sweet tea; the old men telling stories and having a belly laugh.
The last family reunion I attended was in 2004. Dad was 81 and his aunts were in their 90’s. Aunt Georgia, who was really my Grandmother’s cousin, was 104 at the time, still walking and talking sensibly. Infact, she was quite the life of the party. She passed some six or seven years ago.)
@jsimon: Back in the day there was no Crisco or Mazola, only lard…. Have we wondered that ALL diet and health advices out there are just propaganda/marketing? Do we think THEY care about us or our health?…Of course not! and….We believe them!. Come on, let´s wake up!.
Have we wondered whence does it come “STRESS”? (btw: that´s a propaganda invented word, also)
..To be sure, most had little money, no TV, modest homes, a few acres, but they had all they needed and they lived without the stresses we face today
The NWO, the fabianists, the malthusians,etc.,etc., those big idiots and fools, who believe themselves immortal in body beings as they need more power and money everyday of the Lord…Those want us to live in their nightmarish Brave New Word”, living in small concrete cubicles in dirty cities, being dependent of the government´s of big daddy corporation´s pay check.
A life well described in those lyrics: Saint Peter don´t you call me cause I can´t go…I owe my soul to the company store”
Please correct my typos
adolfogiurfa, one of the little secrets the Fabian/socialist/communists never bother to explain is expressed by George Bernard Shaw. That secret is once the welfare types have served their purpose in transferring power to the bureaucrats they will no longer be ‘Useful” In the UK we can already see the programs used to get rid of the ‘Useless eaters” with the Liverpool Care Pathway used as an excuse to deny food water and medication to the elderly and weak newborns cluttering up beds. Fuel Poverty is used to kill off the poverty stricken via cold related illnesses.
My husband mentioned that in the Soviet Union villages were actually give quotas for the number of ‘useless eaters’ to be killed.
This is the exact same logic you see in a farmer. As long as the cow or sheep or goat or horse is useful you care for her/him well. Once past usefulness you put the animal down since it is a waste of resources to keep a useless animal.
Another Fabian, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley while speaking to an audience at University of California, Berkeley, talks of the use of pharmaceuticals to create willing slaves out of the population. (Think ritalin used in grade school children)
Rummel puts it very well.
@Gail CombsIn September 1991, as a preliminary to the United Nations “Earth Summit”… Then its general secretary was Javier Perez de Cuéllar, a member of the “Club of Rome”, a perfect butler for the “elite”… ,