Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding and a version of Tyler Florence's Ultimate Potato Gratin. (New Video)

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. As the poster Fortinbras Armstrong mentioned above....

A steady temp for the Yorkshire pudding should be OK, but as I said, it had been a long time since I had made the pudding. I'm happy to defer to that posters expertise. The Joy of Cooking book mentions turning the oven down. It isn't necessary.

With the meat I tried to follow the advice in my "Joy of Cooking" book which states for a "slow roast" to do the start at high temp thing and the turn it down, in this case all the way to 250. That wasn't going to work as the potatoes took 90 minutes total and could have gone another twenty and been fine.

The way I looked at it, the gratin was like baking a giant baked potato with cream and everything else in it that had to all come up to temp. This is an older house and the oven is rather small. If I had a double, I could have set one of them at 450, done the potatoes in there and done the beef and the pudding in the other at lower temps. As it worked out, when the gratin has been in an hour, I started the beef.

I should have waited.

You're right about serving the pudding. Straight from the oven to the table, if for no other reason than presentation. It will tend to fall a bit. I did do the pudding last and by itself. The meat was resting and the gratin was plenty hot that it stayed that way while the pudding finished.

Know what I really should have done? A meat dish on the stove or mashed potatoes with the beef. Then I wouldn't have been trying to adjust the temp of the one oven all over the place!