For Christmas 2023 we travelled up to stay with our daughter. She had been planning a Christmas dinner for six in their new house and was asking for a little help in the kitchen since this would be her first time. As a modern woman she had, of course, looked online for the right way to do things. The plan was to cook a large roast of beef complete with crispy roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and then all the usual Christmas extras such as pigs in blankets to make it special. To make the beef special she had bought herbs with a view to adding a herb crust to the top.
I suspect this story is not unusual as many of us will help our daughters to navigate the complexities of a Christmas dinner. But something about this struck me as a link to my rose-tinted and nostalgic outlook. All the modern cooking suggestions were far too complicated involving various oven temperatures as well as double cooking and so on. With a single oven the trick is to plan it all for cooking at a single set temperature and to plan the over use accordingly. This is a skill learned when I was young and helping in the kitchen at home in the 1960s and 70s.
The task of dealing with the herb crust was allocated to me and my daughter fussed over providing a range of tools for the purpose. But I simply needed a knife which had to be sharp. I couldn’t help laughing when my daughter produced a good old-fashioned sharpening steel to add a new edge to the large kitchen knife. But it worked wekk and the herbs were quickly chopped on a board by rocking the knife over them before coating the meat.
Next would be the black art of Yorkshire pudding making. These would be individual sized and it was decided to make eight in case the men would like an extra one each. Much to my daughter’s surprise I only required a mixing bowl and a fork to make the batter. The amounts were judged by eye rather than measuring and I whisked with just the fork. My grandmother had taught me to do this and at home I still use her method and even the same fork that was handed down to me. My quantity of batter was perfect for eight puddings and to my relief they all rose beautifully at 180 degrees which was the temperature selected for the whole meal.
In a way this story sums up my rose-tinted view of the past and the methods and tools which come from it. I rejected the complication of modern ways and showed my daughter the traditional methods which had been passed down to me. They work and it was a nice feeling for us all to be working together in the kitchen.
Rosetinted 