You cook the roast to get the Yorkshire

Just talking about it made my mouth water.  Last evening, B, a friend of his and I were extolling the virtues of Yorkshire pudding.  Don't know how we got onto it, but we did.  "You have to have the fat very hot when you pour the batter in," I explained, remembering my mother's directions.  "Then you turn the heat down."  When I asked him this morning if he had any items to add to the grocery list he said, "What about getting a prime rib?"  "It's not really the prime rib, is it," I said.  "It's the Yorkshire."

My mother learned how to make Yorkshire (we never added "pudding") from her mother.  She eschewed muffin tins, always made the big pie in the same pan she roasted the beast.  I have never been able to duplicate her perfect Yorkshire, with its fatty, crustie bottom, topped with a beautiful fluffy pie.  Absolutely delicious.  It was always the best part of the meal, made at the last moment to be presented on her beautiful table.

We used to have our "dinner" at noon on Sundays, after church.  My grandparents were usually there, the table set with its finest and me, seated between grandma and grandpa awaiting the feast.  We always had tomato juice, never wine -- a holdover from my grandparents' Methodist upbringing.  I remember my uncles sneaking off to have a belt or two in the back kitchen at Christmas behind my great-aunt May's back -- a teetotaller to the back teeth.  Aunt May thought even tea was a sin.  "Shall I just wave the teabag over the cup Aunt May?" my Uncle Rollie used to say.  And dancing!  Forget that.  G-d I loved those fine, fine people.

So tonight, we will be enjoying prime rib and Yorkshire.  I will once again pull out her handwritten notes for the recipe and vainly hope to produce what she did every single time. 

I know I will not get it right, but it will nonetheless be a tribute to my maternal kin.