Yorkshire pudding

I wrote a few weeks ago about Jamie Oliver and his fifteen minute meals. One of his recipes which I noted was for Yorkshire pudding and smoked salmon; this seemed fairly easy and would be kosher. I had intended to cook this on a Saturday evening, but the timing never seemed right, until yesterday evening. Fortunately, I had bought smoked salmon and even had exercised the necessary self-control not to touch it.

Once I had decided that "tonight's the night", I looked for the recipe. I had kept the tv programme on our Tivo equivalent, but when I looked, I saw that the programme had disappeared (my wife had deleted it without telling me). So then I went to Oliver's website, only to find that the recipe wasn't there (the site itself isn't too user-friendly). Eventually I tracked the recipe down on someone's blog. I am repeating it here so as to save myself trouble in the future.

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Our oven takes a while to heat up so, so this stage has to be done well before anything else.
2. In a 28cm frying pan, pour a little (teaspoon? spoon?) olive oil and heat. Add to it some rosemary.
3. In a blender, place 2 eggs, 150ml milk and 65g flour. Blend well.
4. When the oil is hot, pour the blended mix into the frying pan and fry for a minute.
5. Place the frying pan into the oven for 13-15 minutes.
6. Cut up smoked salmon
7. Remove frying pan from oven, place salmon on top, cut and serve.

After 15 minutes, I checked with a knife to check that the pudding was cooked through. I quartered the pudding in the frying pan, then transferred to plates. Everyone said that the taste was pleasant and unusual; no one complained, but no one was extra-enthusiastic.

I am tempted to cook this again, possibly using tuna instead of smoked salmon, which I found too salty (and also expensive!). I thought about adding the tuna to the blender, but I suspect that this would make the mixture too heavy and so it wouldn't achieve the required light and fluffy texture.

As it happens, Jamie showed another vegetarian dish on Friday - cheese fritters. These are made with ricotta cheese (along with Parmesan) and look quite good. The timing couldn't be better as next week is the Shavu'ot festival, when it is traditional to eat cheese meals. This allows me a practice run before the festival.

Talking of which, our in-laws invited us to a barbecue for Lag B'Omer last week. I suggested that they come to us for Shavu'ot - this was partially a joke, as they are confirmed meat eaters and when faced with a cheese meal probably would feel as out of place as I do when faced with a barbecue. They told me that the festival is an excuse for another barbecue, tradition be damned.