Herby Wholemeal Scones

As I mentioned last time, this January is about resetting a few eating habits and trying to rebalance slightly away from ‘belly-enhancing’ and towards ‘nutritious’. To that end, here are some herby wholemeal scones. They’re dead simple, good for your digestive system and an easy fit for any number of healthy meals. They’re still nice…

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Quick Yorkshire Oatcakes (or Haverbread, if you prefer)

It’s taken a couple of months, but with these oatcakes we’ve finally got to a recipe that I can use as running fuel without lying to myself. In essence oatcakes are a slightly-leavened bread that you can cook in a pan without a quarter of the effort that goes into baking proper bread. Much as…

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Simple, Seasonal Apple Crackle Pudding

Apple Crackle Pudding doesn’t exactly have the crack that I was expecting from the name (nor does it have any snap or pop). It does, however, have more bite than you can expect from many apple-based Yorkshire dishes as there’s no stewing involved, which gives it a great texture. Apples are, of course, in season…

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Everyday Milk Rolls, Yorkshire’s Soda Bread

I don’t mind admitting that when I first set out to bake these milk rolls I didn’t feel super inspired. I’d been planning on making teacakes, but time was against me and I needed to bake. But, actually, now they’re done and (the remaining six) are waiting to be slathered in butter, I’m quite pleased with…

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Bonfire Toffee (or Plot Toffee, if You’re Feeling Spooky)

There are certain foods I get a weird pleasure from making because they seem like things you buy rather than make. Foods that just seem to arrive in the world fully formed – that capitalism has just got so good at making for us you wouldn’t ever bother to create them yourself. Scotch eggs, sausages, ketchup, bonfire toffee….

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Chili Parkin, a Warm Twist on a Yorkshire Classic

Parkin, it turns out, is barely available beyond the borders of our magnificent county. (Well, Lancashire makes some scurrilous claims on it, but we’ll ignore them for now.) Here in Yorkshire, though, parkin is firmly associated with Bonfire Night for reasons that probably stem from Celtic paganism hidden deep in the bedrock of our culture. It’s…

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Crusty Cheese Bake – Yorkshire’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese

Love-love-love this Crusty Cheese Bake. Although it’s not all that rustic, it really feels like it epitomises traditional Yorkshire food in a lot of ways to me. This dish takes affordable, homely carbs, smothers them in cheese and gives even the greenest cook the option to improvise with it however they like. Crusty Cheese Bake is, I suppose, Yorkshire’s…

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Keighley Cheese Muffins with Perfect Poached Eggs

Eight recipes in to Yorkshire Grub and I’ve used the word ‘simple’ approximately 1,082 times. But, honestly, these cheese muffins from Keighley are about as simple a bake as you could humanly expect to exist. These little pillows of joy (via Joan Poulson’s Old Yorkshire Recipes, 1974) take about 20 minutes from getting out your mixing bowl to slathering…

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Hot Bacon Cake, Serious Savoury Comfort Food

Hot Bacon Cake. The moment I read the name of this one in Mrs Appleby’s Traditional Yorkshire Recipes (1982) I knew it was getting made. The name sang out to me. And it is a cake, too. This isn’t some pressed potato and bacon concoction or any such thing. An actual cake. With bacon in it. It’s…

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