Ok, so today we had brisket again - and it was very good - I put a chopped onion in the casserole and this improved the gravy - and I made a pan full of yorkshire pudding. We all like the way we have Yorkshire pudding here - like a thick, soft savoury pancake, a rectangular slab of gravy-sponge... however, I suppose, given that the commercial yorkshire pudding one is sometimes served in pubs, has a texture quite like polystyrene, suggests that the Platonic Yorkshire pudding is not what we have.
I think this is partly because we are too impatient to wait until it gets crisp - although it usually has crisp edges - I cannot really believe it takes 30 mins to cook as some recipes suggest - when I was a child we used to use a bun tin and cook individual ones - this was a faff since it required putting a few drops of fat from the roast in each hole and then pouring in the batter. These cooked in about 10 minutes. Nowadays the chance of getting that much fat from a joint is absurd.
When I was a child, there were usually two or three pudding bowls filled with dripping in one of the cupboards (not the fridge). One for beef, one for lamb, one for pork. The dripping was used for frying (sometimes) or slathering onto the next roast, with a handful of salt, et voila! The British roast was ready. The jelly was scopped out and eaten on bread together with salt, and some of the dripping. Nowadays, when I save the meat juices I am lucky to get a ramekin full - and the layer of fat on the top is usually about a quarter of the contents, the rest being nice, winey, herby jelly. In my mother and grandmother's pudding basins, the jelly could be a tiny smear at the bottom, that you were lucky to find. Pork seemed to be particularly lacking in jelly - but provided a very nice, white dripping, almost lard I suppose.
Where has all this fat gone? Of course we are all terrified of animal fat - even though it has largely been proved that (a) it isn't that bad for you (b) your cholesterol levels tend to be hereditary and/or laid down in early life. Mine are nice and low. So, yes, you can breed skinnier, leaner animals and that's clearly a factor (lamb now normally has more fat than pork).
Recently, during the Great Frugality, I tried to use some of my scant resources of dripping to fry meat. Remarkably I found it added a depth of flavour that other cooking mediums lacked. We have all been vaguely given the impression that olive oil is the correct default frying medium, although I tend to use rapeseed oil, unless I want an olive/Mediterranean dish. This is why I rather wish I had more ample dripping. It has a lot more depth and perhaps a subliminal comforting flavour of memories.
In this paean to dripping (or should that be an encomium?) I am reminded of the rather mean-spirited vegetarian who once said to me "the thing about meat is, you have to add so many things to it to make it taste good..." She'd clearly forgotten what meat tasted like. All you have to do with meat is add a bit of salt - other seasonings are available. I should have replied "Oh yes, unlike quorn and tofu - which are delicious eaten on their own.!"
I think this is partly because we are too impatient to wait until it gets crisp - although it usually has crisp edges - I cannot really believe it takes 30 mins to cook as some recipes suggest - when I was a child we used to use a bun tin and cook individual ones - this was a faff since it required putting a few drops of fat from the roast in each hole and then pouring in the batter. These cooked in about 10 minutes. Nowadays the chance of getting that much fat from a joint is absurd.
When I was a child, there were usually two or three pudding bowls filled with dripping in one of the cupboards (not the fridge). One for beef, one for lamb, one for pork. The dripping was used for frying (sometimes) or slathering onto the next roast, with a handful of salt, et voila! The British roast was ready. The jelly was scopped out and eaten on bread together with salt, and some of the dripping. Nowadays, when I save the meat juices I am lucky to get a ramekin full - and the layer of fat on the top is usually about a quarter of the contents, the rest being nice, winey, herby jelly. In my mother and grandmother's pudding basins, the jelly could be a tiny smear at the bottom, that you were lucky to find. Pork seemed to be particularly lacking in jelly - but provided a very nice, white dripping, almost lard I suppose.Where has all this fat gone? Of course we are all terrified of animal fat - even though it has largely been proved that (a) it isn't that bad for you (b) your cholesterol levels tend to be hereditary and/or laid down in early life. Mine are nice and low. So, yes, you can breed skinnier, leaner animals and that's clearly a factor (lamb now normally has more fat than pork).
Recently, during the Great Frugality, I tried to use some of my scant resources of dripping to fry meat. Remarkably I found it added a depth of flavour that other cooking mediums lacked. We have all been vaguely given the impression that olive oil is the correct default frying medium, although I tend to use rapeseed oil, unless I want an olive/Mediterranean dish. This is why I rather wish I had more ample dripping. It has a lot more depth and perhaps a subliminal comforting flavour of memories.
In this paean to dripping (or should that be an encomium?) I am reminded of the rather mean-spirited vegetarian who once said to me "the thing about meat is, you have to add so many things to it to make it taste good..." She'd clearly forgotten what meat tasted like. All you have to do with meat is add a bit of salt - other seasonings are available. I should have replied "Oh yes, unlike quorn and tofu - which are delicious eaten on their own.!"
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