In Britain we like puddings, and do we have a lot of them! Basically there are two kinds: those that are sweet and those that are not. The former include Christmas pudding and rice pudding, which you can read about elsewhere in this book. In this chapter I want to tell you about the savoury (= non-sweet) puddings.
The most famous of these is the Yorkshire pudding which comes from the north of England. It is usually eaten with roast beef, gravy and horseradish sauce (which is like Japanese wasabi but white and less hot). Yorkshire pudding is made of egg and air, and is very light. It is cooked in an oven and must be eaten while hot. Cold Yorkshire pudding is probably as horrible as microwaved sushi, though I cannot be 100 percent sure on that as I have never eaten hot sushi.
Another savoury pudding from the north of England is the black pudding. It is made of pig blood that has gone hard. It may sound pretty terrible, but in fact it is not so bad as you might think. When you buy it in a shop, it looks like a sausage (and tastes like one, too). You cut it into slices and fry it in oil.
To be honest, I have only ever eaten it once, and afterwards I felt very sick. I was staying in a hotel in the Lake District, a beautiful and mountainous area in the north of England. After eating black pudding for breakfast, I met a friend who drove me up and down the mountains in his sports car. He drove very fast. I get car-sick even when going slowly along a straight, flat road. The combination of the rich pudding and the mountain roads was too much for my weak stomach.
My worst experience with a savoury English pudding came when I was still at school. One day I was visiting my uncle and aunt on their farm. My aunt is a wonderful cook but on that day she made steak and kidney pudding. I hate the smell of kidney, but I did not want to upset my aunt, so I tried to eat as much of the pudding as I could. All would have been okay if it had not been for the view out of the dining-room window. In the field next to the house a cow was in the middle of giving birth to a calf. I had never seen such a sight before. As I ate my steak and kidney pudding, I watched the calf struggle out of its mother and into the world. Somehow it did not seem right to be eating steak while watching a cow give birth. Maybe I am just too sensitive.