Ian McMillan: Spilling my secrets of getting summat from nowt

“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” she said, “but what my husband likes best about it is the way you make something out of nothing.” She looked worried, but I was secretly delighted. Something out of nothing: that should be my middle name. Summat from Nowt: the motto of Yorkshire man and woman since the Dawn of Time.

Let’s face it: here in the White Rose County we’re experts at the exploiting of the summat/nowt interface. Take the Yorkshire Pudding, the Queen of Yorkshire cuisine, as an example. Look at it on the plate, rising magnificently like a newly-formed island in a sea of gravy. Have a bite and reflect on how it tastes, how the subtle interplay of batter and gravy make you sit back and go “Mmmm...” so enthusiastically that the aforementioned batter and gravy spill down your best Sunday cardigan.

Think how you try to dab the spillage with the edge of the tablecloth and you pull too hard and the gravy jug topples like a drunk uncle at a wedding and gravy pours all over your best Sunday cloth.

Think how you take your cardy off and try to mop up the gravy but there’s so much gravy you might as well fetch sandbags and alert the authorities.

Think how you can hear your wife finishing the phone call to her mother in the next room. (That’s the telephone that’s in the next room of course: her mother’s in Cleethorpes, which is only the next room if you happen to be in Grimsby.)

Think how the gravy is cascading from the table towards the floor; think briefly how it looks like the well-known Yorkshire landmark Malham Tarn. Your wife is about to come into the back room or, as it will be known for the rest of your life unless you do something about it now, The Room of Gravy.

You resort to desperate measures. You shout to your wife, “Could you just fetch the mustard from in the pantry?” and this buys you a few precious extra seconds.

You grab your perfect Yorkshire pudding from the plate. You place it under the river of gravy and it begins to fill. Because the pudding is so beautifully made from eggs and flour and milk, it will hold the gravy. Because the pudding is so perfectly absorbent, it will mop up the gravy wonderfully. All of the gravy, absorbed.

Your wife comes in with the mustard and there is no evidence of the spill. You made a sponge from a pudding. A mop from a pudding. A bucket from a pudding. A column from a pudding.

You made, let’s face it, summat from nowt.