Yes, the ingredients are identical. The differences are two: popovers are made in butter, YP is made in beef fat, and popovers are made in narrow, tallish molds to push them up and create plenty of hollow space, whereas YP is generally made in the beef pan or other skillet, so they do not puff nearly as much.
Yorkshire puddings are a type of popover, which is defined as being leavened by eggs, made with flour and milk. While they are more savory than other types, they are a subset of the popover category. Dutch Babies are sweet versions.
You can make individual Yorkshire puddings in a traditional pan.
To clarify: fresh pumpkin and baking cherries are not available to me, so I have to use canned.
Ah, I thought he ment “pumpkin pie filling” which is spiced and flavored already.
Amen.
You’re not missing out on the pumpkin. I have a choice, and the only time I ever will make my own pumpkin puree again is if I don’t have access to the (IMHO) superior canned pumpkin. Or I’ll just use fresh sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin (which, like I said, I feel makes a better “pumpkin” pie anyway.)
Cherries, I’ll agree with you on, as long as they’re good ripe cherries.
Canned pumpkin isn’t so bad, but I’d avoid the premixed canned pie filling. For a truly knockout pie though, don’t use pumpkin, but a firm dry winter squash such as butternut or hubbard, and bake or steam it until it’s tender, then puree the meat and use that in place of canned pumpkin.
Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins can be OK for soup, but they’re generally too watery and fibrous to make a really good pie.
Vindaloo’s another one for me.
Yeah, when I do it from scratch, I would usually use butternut squash. Or, like I said, sweet potato, but that’s really cheating. At least butternut squash is still a squash and pretty much the same thing as a pumpkin, just shaped differently. I just find it’s a lot of effort for essentially no improvement. (You have to squeeze the ever living crap out of the puree to get it dry enough, in my experience.)
I’ve never tried the canned pie filling, and I don’t think I ever would. I would assume it’s not going to be spiced the way I like it.
If anyone wants to see them being made (and the difference) just watch the episodes of ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ on the Food Network where they go to The Tomahawk in British Columbia (Yorkshire Pudding) and Foreign and Domestic in Austin (Popovers).
In reality, I make everything from scratch at home. In particular, I haven’t bought any bread in years. I make it at home by hand. Whole-wheat French baguettes, Italian, pita, bagels, matzos, anadama, cornbread, rice bread, chapatis, parathas, frybread, lángos, focaccia, pizza, corn tortillas, and everything.
I would love to bake all my own breads, but I have no self control around fresh baked bread. it’s a greater weakness to me than any desserts.
My home made onlies are pastas & their sauces, custards, deep dish pizza (still can’t make a great thin crust), soups & stews, cookies, gravies, most breakfast foods. I also don’t like any pre cooked meats.
In short, we go out for dinner for items that we don’t have the to cook or are cheaper to purchase out than prepare for two people. It’s a short list. I have the time to cook. I enjoy shopping, cooking, experimenting in the kitchen.
Chicken soup, clam chowder, mashed potatoes, gravy, cocktail sauce, frosting.
Noodles.
Our 14 year old daughter made four pounds of noodles for Thanksgiving using sixty eggs, flour, etc.:
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The egg whites were used to make three Angel Food Cakes:
It was a lot of work, but her noodles tasted nothing like store-bought noodles. They were awesome.
Home-made noodles really are awesome.
No pasta machine? Hand-cut just like my grandmothers - amazing kid!
FYI, a pizza cutter is a lot quicker for cutting noodles
Or you can just flour the rolled out dough, roll it into a log (think like a fruit roll-up), and just cut at intervals with a knife. That’s how I did do them, as I don’t own a pasta machine. Or if you’re really freaking awesome, you do that Asian thing where you stretch and halve, stretch and halve, stretch and halve until you have impossibly thin hand stretched noodles. That I would love to learn. I could never get the dough elastic enough not to break in the process.
You make vindaloo from scratch?
Recipe please!
Preach it! I am floored by the people who will prepare a homemade filling, then casually defile it by putting it in a cardboard crust stinking of chemicals. I have tried every single pre-made pie crust I’ve ever come across, because it would be amazing to find one that is really good, and every single one was ghastly.
People: the whole POINT of pie is pie crust! The fillings can be had many other ways, the yummy joy of pie is the flaky, tender crust cradling your delicious:
[ul]
[li]pumpkin custard[/li][li]custard[/li][li]baked, spiced fruits of every description[/li][li]creamy chicken and vegetable stew[/li][li]sweet buttery nuts[/li][/ul]
and so on… so making the effort to prepare a quality homemade filling and putting it in a storebought crust is the ultimate :smack::smack::smack:
I am a very-good-to-excellent baker, but some things have definitely eluded my efforts to perfect them at home, which I try to do precisely because the majority of commercial varieties suck. Breads have been my biggest challenge, and I fear it is in large part due to the limitations of home ovens.
I make downright addictive (and almost certainly NON-kosher, although I don’t really have any idea) matzo, I call it Shiksa Matzo: flour, cracked pepper, and sesame seeds. Add warm water into which you have mixed salt, mix, knead, rest. Roll SUPER thin, almost translucent, and bake in the hottest oven you can on the bottom of a broiler pan or cookie sheet. (The bottom because you have to work fast, and having a lip in the way totally screws it) Depending on how much heat you can get out of your oven and how thinly you roll, it can take as little as 2 minutes per side. They are ridiculously delicious.
My cornbread, if you like yankee style, is virtually perfect.
My brioche will make you weak in the knees. Especially when I form it into a pie type shape and fill it with very lightly sweetened creme fraiche custard before baking… oh man…
But beyond that…
All my attempts to make what I prefer for day-to-day bread eating, which is some version of French or basic rustic white with a good chew and great crust, have all fallen far short of my dreams, and definitely not in the same league as the items I just mentioned.(Most recently I’ve made a very straight-ahead no-knead/dutch oven bread, which is a step up, but still short of the mark I seek…) If you have any secrets, or even if you can simply explain why I am probably not able to pull off great bread, please share.
And while you’re at it, another bread I’ve tried many, many, many times to make, and failed at every single time, is corn tortillas. I live in LA, and one of my all-time favorite meals is tacos carnitas as it is made at a cafe on Olvera Street. I finally achieved true fabulous carnitas after years of incredibly frustrating failures (the key is to cover the well-salted pork completely with lard and cook it at a very low temp for a long time, then quickly fry it in very hot lard to crisp it up before serving. I almost cried when I realized I’d finally found the key. Now I use the same technique on chicken and ribs. Amazing.) but the thick, handmade tortillas that absolutely must be eaten freshly made because it is impossible to reheat them and achieve the same texture, even by steaming, have proved to be my white whale. Crumbly, chewy, broken, tasteless…just… nope. Not gonna happen. Are yours excellent? Do you know any tricks?
And finally: frybread. I’ve only had it twice, visiting my sister who lives in Aztec, New Mexico. AMAZING stuff. Fucking AMAZING. This fantastic tendercrisp texture…fuck. More, please.
I’ve tried once to do it at home and it was pretty dismal. Do you have a great recipe or techniques?