The first time I had the overwhelmingly awesome experience of being served Yorkshire pudding was on a sailboat somewhere out in the middle of the ocean.
It was during the first of three voyages I made from Boothbay Harbor to the Caribbean on a 60-foot ketch. The sailboat was the Symfoni, built for the king of Sweden back in the 1930s. The captain and cook were both English, and the captain was, to put it nicely, set in his ways. Think Captain Bligh. Wicked smart, and a world class sailor, but not the sweetest nature.
There were lots of firsts on that trip for a 21-year-old Maine girl who had just married a sailor after knowing him for three months. The previous summer I had been hired as a deckhand on a 53-foot gaff-rigged schooner that sailed out of Boothbay Harbor on a daily or weekly basis. I had never stepped foot on a sailboat before. But I was cute, and willing to learn. (Actually I’m really not sure how I got that job. I wasn’t that cute.)
I was waiting on a dock the day the Mary E sailed into Boothbay Harbor from Southwest Harbor, where she had been having work done. At the helm was the newly hired Captain, Stan Parks, wearing a green cap with long, thick, curly dark brown hair blowing out behind him. Anyway, three months later we were married.
I know. You don’t have to say anything.
Around a month after becoming a young bride I found myself aboard the Symfoni with a crew of six, headed out to sea — first to Bermuda and then on to the Caribbean.
It was a huge adventure, and a rude awakening, all wrapped up into one big eye-opening life-changing experience.
But we’re talking about food here.
Among the many foods I was introduced to during that three-week ocean voyage were some typical English things. Canned kipper snacks, heated, were served with scrambled eggs for breakfast. The captain doused his eggs with Tabasco sauce, so I followed suit. Still do.
And there was teatime. A must for Capt. Mel. Every day around three we were served tea and some elegant pastry. The wind might be howling with seas crashing over the relatively small boat being tossed around in the middle of the ocean, but that cook would be down below in the galley making a bundt cake or some scones.
High tea was never skipped. It was served daily at 1500 hrs.
To the crew, who were either on watch at the helm or being tossed around in a damp bunk, teatime was a huge treat. A bundt cake has never tasted as good as it did on that boat out in the middle of the ocean.
One of the things I missed most on ocean voyages was cold milk. The refrigeration was limited to a small generator-run icebox, so we had to resort to Long Life milk, or UHT – ultra high temperature pasteurized. It didn’t need refrigeration. Warm milk just doesn’t cut it.
Anyway — Yorkshire pudding.
I don’t remember what the occasion was, but the cook prepared a dinner of roast beef with roasted potatoes and asparagus — and Yorkshire pudding.
We were somewhere in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle. I had taken a watch with the captain the night before, and he had entertained me with stories about boats mysteriously disappearing in the triangle. I’m thinking he might have suggested a roast beef dinner as a possible last supper. Just to scare us of course. He had no intention of letting that yacht go down.
I remember being up on deck at the helm with the aroma of roast beef wafting up from the galley. At dinnertime, the boat was put on automatic pilot and the six of us gathered around the beautiful varnished teak table in the main cabin and enjoyed one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget the perfect tender prime rib, roasted potatoes and asparagus, and the golden brown, crunchy-on-the-top, baked custardy inside, Yorkshire pudding.
It was made the way Yorkshire pudding should be made — in the pan with the drippings from the roast beef. The cook had made a dark brown gravy with more of the drippings, and that was ladled over it.
The cook made popovers during that voyage, too, for breakfast and teatime. Fresh out of the oven, golden brown and crunchy, with butter melting inside their airy interiors, they were heavenly. The good news about popovers is that they're simple to make. Google popovers and/or Yorkshire pudding. For a variation on Yorkshire pudding, here’s my mother’s recipe for Swedish pancakes, a fabulous breakfast:
1/2 stick butter, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup flour, dash of nutmeg
Beat all together and pour into 9” square pan, greased, and bake 20 minutes at 400. Top with butter and maple syrup. Just like pancakes only better!
I have made Yorkshire pudding over the years of being a landlubber, but it has never tasted as good as it did that day out in the middle of the ocean.
The only thing lacking was a Manhattan before dinner and a glass or two of good red wine with it. There WAS a bar on that yacht. It was varnished teak with big carved fishes on the top, and it was full to the brim with top of the line bottles of every kind of booze imaginable. But that was for the owners and their friends to enjoy when they flew down to meet the boat in Antigua a few weeks later. The crew was fed well, but there was no drinking allowed.
And believe me, there were times during that cruise, like after we survived a fast-moving hurricane off City Island in New York, when a Manhattan would have been welcomed.
Thankfully there was plenty of rum in St. Thomas.
I’m not a chef. I lay no claim to being an authority on food or cooking. I’m a good cook, and a lover of good food. And I know how to spell and put a sentence together. This column is simply meant to be fun, and hopefully inspiring. So to anyone reading this whose hackles are raised because you know more about the subject of food than I, relax. I believe you.
