I may have lived down South for a while now, but I’m a Yorkshire lass at heart and it will always remain that way. My heart is very much in Yorkshire, and my food preferences too. Therefore when Toby Carvery invited me to join them at their food innovation centre to come up with some new recipes for Yorkie wraps for Yorkshire Pudding Day I just couldn’t refuse.
Let’s start with some basic facts. Yorkshire puddings (or “batter puddings” as my ill-informed Norfolk born other half insists on calling them) are quite simply the nicest foodstuff known to man (or woman) kind. Admittedly it’s hard to always make perfect ones at home, but they are proper lush (that’s a technical foodie term) and go with absolutely everything – including Christmas dinner.
If you go back to basics, a Yorkshire pudding is actually just the same batter mix as a pancake, which means that there’s definitely no need to restrict them to a savoury food option. Bearing this I’m mind I set about coming up with three different twists that you could give a yorkie wrap.
For those of you not familiar with the whole concept of a yorkie wrap – where the heck have you been until now? Simply take a large Yorkshire pudding – one made in an 8 inch cake tin is ideal according to James the Toby Carvery chef that I spoke to – and then spread your desired filling of choice out on your pudding and then roll it into a wrap. The result – an incredibly tasty, handheld meal. Delicious!
So let’s get on to what to put inside your yorkie wrap.
Tradition Yorkshire Roast
Let’s at least start traditional with this one. To me Yorkshire puddings go with a roast. Normally, but admittedly not exclusively, roast beef. So that’s where I started my Yorkie wrap experience. Traditional roast beef.
In my mind beef also has to have horseradish with it, so I started off this wrap by covering the surface of the Yorkie with a thin spread of horseradish sauce. Then in went the roast beef, roast potatoes and carrots. A good drizzle of proper homemade gravy finished it off, with more gravy served on the side, to dip your Yorkie in as you eat it. Traditional, but perfect. It’s also possible to add additional vegetable twists depending on your own vegetable preferences. I’m now thinking that a bit of cauliflower cheese would actually work really well in there. Or possibly some green or red cabbage too for some added colour and vitamins.
Crispy Duck Pancake
I stuck with savoury, but went from Yorkshire to Asia with my second wrap. Thinking again about the fact that Yorkshire pudding batter is effectively the same as pancake batter I went to try to recreate the taste of a crispy duck pancake. I’ve been in love with these since I was first lucky enough to have them made fresh at my table in a Hong Kong restaurant over ten years ago and they’re always my first choice when I go anywhere with them on the menu.
This time the Yorkshire had a layer of hoisin sauce as its base. On top of this I added the shredded crispy duck, plus thin cucumber batons and spring onion.
Rolled up it the flavour combination was exactly as I hoped for.
The hoisin sauce, duck, cucumber and spring onion go perfectly and the Yorkshire pudding just means that the pancake element is increased over what you might normally get. But it does just tastes so amazing. I’m even going to have a try at making these at home again so that everyone else can see how well it works.
Banana Yorkies from Mars
After two savoury options I then had to go sweet. Just had to. After all – when you’ve had an amazing main course there still always seems to be extra room for pudding, mo matter how full you are.
To me, any decent pudding has to involve chocolate and that’s what I tried to do next. I was also having some strange craving for a 80s style banana split the time, hence the combination I came up with.
I took one of those Mars duo packs that you can get, and cut the Mars bars into lengthwise slices, so that each slice got some of the caramel layer as well as the nougat and chocolate covering. On top of these slices went slices of banana, before I finished off with small scoops of vanilla ice cream.
With the Yorkie still slightly warm from the oven this created a gorgeous gooey result that was simply the perfect pudding. Admittedly, it wasn’t the easiest thing to eat when holding it, but going for a bowl and spoon option meant that you can add extra chocolate sauce if you so wish! But thinking about it caramel sauce, possibly hot, would also work just as well.
So there you have it. The three Yorkie Wraps that I came up with for Toby Carvery. All very different, but I hope you will agree utterly delicious. When I went along to meet with Toby Carvery we also tried out a full English breakfast version, complete with baked beans, which would be the perfect addition to a breakfast menu, and also a pizza version with garlic bread inside too. Also incredibly.
So now I just need to go away and convince them to put the duck and Mars options on their menu. And maybe the breakfast and pizza ones too. Who’s with me?
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