Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Dorothy Sayers, maybe because I've been studying Welsh, maybe because I'm trying to get to the UK in the next month or two, but I've been jonesing for crumpets, dense, chewy, slightly sour crumpets with lots of butter. I thought I remembered my mother making them, but she said her mother had brought home some crumpet pans and the two of them decided they were too hard to make, and never tried again. She said we used to get them at the supermarket. Not an East Village treat, I guess, as I've never noticed them at any store around here.
The thing my mother did make that was even more delicious than crumpets was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, the Yorkshire pudding like a popover, crisp on the outside from being cooked in hot beef fat & soft inside. Doug Oliver & I tried to reproduce it one Christmas but we were disappointed. Everyone else thought it was good but we knew better.
The thing my mother did make that was even more delicious than crumpets was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, the Yorkshire pudding like a popover, crisp on the outside from being cooked in hot beef fat & soft inside. Doug Oliver & I tried to reproduce it one Christmas but we were disappointed. Everyone else thought it was good but we knew better.