The recipes: p257, "Sausages with Onion Gravy"; p288, "Perfect Mash"
A bit later than planned due to the mind-bending awfulness of real-life events, and I can't claim to be entirely in the mood for writing this even now - but in the face of our relative powerlessness to change things in the wider world, perhaps the only reasonable approach is to throw ourselves into harmless distractions like randomised cookery. A kind of self-imposed "bread and circuses", if you will, albeit I don't think even I own a cookbook that would require me to construct a big top for lions and trapeze artists. (Though I wouldn't put it past Everyday Novelli.)
Even before the triumph of the orange-faced fascist, I wasn't altogether sure how the Random Kitchen project would pan out this week considering we tend to roll the dice on a Sunday. This Sunday gone was Sam's birthday, and I didn't know if I had the heart to subject him to whatever the random gods threw our way, so I gave him the right of veto - no skipping the recipe itself, of course (rules are rules), but if it was something uninspiring or actively awful then we could at least hold it over until Monday and go for a Rox Burger instead.
And I fully expected that veto to be exercised when the Riverford Farm Cook Book ended up being the chosen tome. After all, what kind of birthday gift could possibly be hidden in its reliably underwhelming pages? Okra pudding? Deep-fried nettles? Sprouts à l'orange?
Oh. "Sausages with Onion Gravy".
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| Cinderella, you shall go to the ball! Hic. |
In addition to sounding suspiciously un-recipe-like (how many more times during this project are we going to encounter an author trying to pass off "put some stuff with some other stuff" as an actual recipe?), if we're being honest, this one sounds suspiciously un-vegetable-like too. You know, what with the sausages and all. In fairness, though, Riverford do sell organic meats, cheeses and the like alongside their headline veg box range - and insofar as there's any cooking involved in this recipe at all, it certainly involves a vegetable, namely the humble onion. So, taking on board the in-recipe suggestion of serving these bangers with the (ahem) "Perfect Mash" from later in the book (if only to give me more to write about), I set about whipping up an acceptably hearty autumnal birthday feast.
The prep: It'd be wrong to penny-pinch when giving someone your birthday sausage - and for a Spalding boy, it has to be Lincolnshires, of course. Elsewhere, it turns out I'm doing this recipe something of a disservice by disputing its complexity; the gravy does involve quite a long ingredient list, though most of them are store cupboard staples in one form or another, so that's useful.
The only thing I need to buy is the titular onions. I'm not ashamed to admit it takes me a while to parse the line "4 large onions (use half red onions, if possible)". What, I think to myself, are "half red onions"? Is this like semi-dried tomatoes? Are they a pale pink colour like shallots? How come I've never seen them in the supermarket before?
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| C'mon, brain. |
With that linguistic puzzle duly unravelled - and the results ignored, since I'm going to use red onions almost exclusively (they're on offer at the local Asda and I love them, so nerr) - we're off and ready to go.
The making: Butter and oil are heated in a large frying pan. The sausages are added, cooked until browned all over, then set aside. Next, the thinly sliced onions are added to the pan and cooked, covered, over a super-low heat for 45 minutes, during which time Sam's eyes start to sting like crazy and eventually pop out of their sockets altogether.
The introduction to the recipe does state that it "includes generous amounts [of gravy] to satisfy even the most diehard fanatic", and I'm starting to see why...
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| That's a lot of onions |
...but the slow process of stirring and cooking (during which the virtues of using a non-stick pan become evident) soon cuts the onions down to size:
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| That's better |
A dessertspoon of sugar is stirred through to help the onions caramelise a little, then a dessertspoon of flour is stirred through to help the onions thicken a little. 400ml of beef stock and 100ml of red wine are the next additions ("chicken stock" and "beer" are offered as alternatives here, which: nope) before the sausages are returned to the pan.
At this stage they're practically swimming...
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| Glub |
...but 20 minutes of simmering really does reduce down the liquid and concentrate the flavour like the recipe suggests, and pretty soon we're ready to roll. The final touch is the addition of a tablespoon each of mustard, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. This ought to give things a nice kick, and I am definitely on board with this approach.
In the meantime, I've been making the "Perfect Mash" (a bold claim, Riverford), which basically involves a ratio of 10 parts cooked and mashed/riced potato to 1 part milk, 1 part melted butter and 1 part - oh yes - double cream.
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| in me now pls |
You can probably work out the "method" part of the recipe for yourself, so I won't insult your intelligence by regurgitating it here. Since this all seems heroically unhealthy, I decide to quickly prep some green beans in a vain attempt to salvage some kind of nutritional value from the day (though I'm acutely aware that this goes against every principle of birthday indulgence).
The eating: Well now. There isn't an easy way to make this kind of thing look elegant on a plate - bangers and mash can only be arranged in so many ways, after all, most of them not especially pleasing on the eye. Add in the fact that there is a lot of gravy - I wouldn't even necessarily call it "gravy" any more, it's really just red onion chutney but a bit wetter - and the presentation side of things is never going to be an aesthete's delight.
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| See? |
It's basically just a pile of stuff. But oh! what stuff. The mash, the mash is good. The mash is creamy. I don't know if I'd call it "perfect". But the onion
Since you can't really go wrong with sausages, mash and gravy, I was expecting something great but predictable from this week's choice (like the key change before the final chorus of "Fångad av en stormvind", say), but this is actively epic. Against all odds, I am very, very impressed with something from the pages of the Riverford Farm Cook Book! And all it took was the addition of some meat.
But no, seriously, the vegetable really is the star here - it is, in the parlance of my native region, proper cush. Slow cooking, kids - it's the way forward (and it's one reason I'm glad we do Random Kitchen at the weekend when I actually have time for this shit).
One-word verdict: Celebratory.
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