Meat-free Yorkshire Puddings with gravy

Yorkshire Pudding with Vegetables in Wine Gravy

This is a truly wonderful meat-free recipe that is simplicity itself and yet very impressive and extremely tasty. It's fabulous to serve on a cold evening or as part of a dinner party and yet it's so very quick and easy to prepare.

It combines very inexpensive vegetables in a rich wine-flavored gravy, served on a bed of delicious, light and fluffy Yorkshire pudding.

The pudding batter is cooked in the oven to form a base to which the vegetables are added. Serve with a salad and fresh, crusty bread to mop up the lovely rich (and wine-flavored) gravy.

If you're feeding a crowd, it's easy to double up, triple up are even quadruple up to make larger quantities. This makes this recipe perfect for almost any occasion and is a great meat-free alternative.

The addition of the wine - which makes the gravy beautifully rich - makes this dish perfect for serving at celebrations and holidays; the wine simply adds that special 'something'. Don't you always have a bottle on the go when you're cooking? I do!

I admit straight away that I cheat when it comes to the Yorkshire pudding batter.Many Yorkshire people would ostracise me for that! But really,it's quicker, simpler and tastier than making my own. Truly.

For the batter base:

• 1 pack Yorkshire pudding mix (my mum would disown me)
• 1 egg

For the filling:

• 1 large or two small onions peeled and chopped
• 1 carrot scraped and sliced into rounds
• Button mushrooms - about 6 oz. - washed and quartered
• I tablespoon olive oil
• Half a glass red wine
• A touch - just the tip of a teaspoon - of Marmite

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. It's a good idea to add the dish in which you're going to cook the Yorkshire pudding to heat it up.
2. Make the Yorkshire pudding batter by pouring the mix into a bowl and adding a fresh egg and 220 ml of cold water. I know this is a cheat but there's no way I can make Yorkshire puddings the way my mum used to. Mix it well with a balloon whisk. Leave this to relax until the oven reaches the required temperature.
3. Add half the oil to a frying pan or skillet and gently sauté the onions. Add the sliced carrots and cook the two together for five minutes. Add the quartered mushrooms and cook for a further minute.Pour in the wine and bring to a boil then reduce the heat so that the vegetables are simmering gently. Take the teaspoon with just a touch Marmite and stir this in.
4. Pour the remaining oil into the hot oven dish and return it to the oven until the oil is hot. Add the Yorkshire pudding batter and bake for about twenty minutes.Pour the vegetables over the cooked pudding, cook for a further five minutes,slice and serve!

It's actually quite simple. My mum, who made the very best in the world, couldn't make perfect puddings in Florida either.

When she used to come here to visit, my brother would beg her to make them - he was having withdrawal symptoms, I think.

They were tasty enough but,sad to say, they weren't the real thing.

Mum had three theories about this:

• The water, she maintained, is all wrong. You just can't make Yorkshire puddings without good Yorkshire water straight from the tap
• The flour is ll wrong too.Exactly what my mum thought the difference are,I'm not sure, but she still stated that you can't make proper puddings with American flour
• The humidity, she said, in Florida, means that the batter, when it's resting, doesn't do what it's supposed to.(She wasn't quite clear exactly what)

But those were her excuses and she was sticking to them...