Sunday, November 01, 2009

Of sauce and sausages


Sunday mornings, the frying pans come out (cast iron, cleaned only in hot water, no detergent) and it's time for The Full Zetlandic. Or The Partial, as I have seen gargantuan Shetland morning repasts which include fried smoked salmon and fried beans, plus of course the fried bannock, sassermeat (saucermeat) black pudding, bacon, eggs and indeed anything else cookable that happens to be in the vicinity. Including lamb's liver, which is, I have to say, delicious. But not with salmon.

Anyway, we have a thing about sausages and bacon in this house. We are purists, but not in any TV chefbastard kind of way. We only like cheap industrial sausages, particularly Richmond's Irish recipe. We hate pretentious sausages, particularly those 'Finest' brands you get, which are always full of sour gristle and take far too long to cook. And when it comes to bacon, none of your dry-cured nonsense. Streaky, unsmoked and cheap is best, fried to crunchy hardness.

But - and it's a big 'but' - the accompaniments have to be right. No pickles, mustards or chutneys. HP Original from a glass bottle (recently re-introduced metal cap is tremendously satisfying in use) and Heinz Tomato from anything (doesn't seem to be affected by plastic).

Of such simple things is the perfect All Saints Day constructed...

5 comments:

JimmyC said...

A topic of discussion last night taking punters home in the taxi was the fry up. Mind sometimes the Zetlandic version can be accompanied with a drink of your choice, perchance a tin of chilled T.

Which by the way has wiped out the Shetland Rose by the roadside.

The worst thing about supermarket sausages is the amount of herbs included. We do like those Finest Scotch Beef from Tesco and the Harroaget ones are fine but have a tough skin when grilled, haven't tried them fried yet.

Anonymous said...

Cheap industrial sausages? Oh dear...try some good Newmarket bangers. No faffing about with herbs and stuff, just good pork and a LOAD of black pepper.

Nairn said...

Glad to see you went for the healthy option breakfast Tom, mind you nothing beats the campfire breakfast where bizarrely the food from the pan manages to be both raw and burnt at the same time, and you can never get enough hot water to get the grease off the plates/cutlery/your hands when washing up

Chools
A windy wet night in Nairn

Alistair said...

Dont you think that broon sauce has just got to be one of the best inventions of British civilisation.........

But.....

The sacred art of sausage for me decrees a good percentage of meat not the pathetic mush of mechanically recovered meat from cheap supermarket sausages. I agree they are best fried, but for me slowly and gently - about 40 minutes and unpricked - just to get that salty sticky chewy dark crust that makes a scotch roll and sausage.

but also Puhleeze.... save me from some of those God awful concotions that are everywhere these days and just give me a good pork, beef or at a push pork and beef in a natural skin.

progress? You can keep it as far as a sausage goes for me I'm afraid.

Cheers Tom........

Rachel Fox said...

How many TV chefs would it take to make a good sausage filling? Would they be chewy? I think we need answers to these questions...and while we're at it - is there an opening for a good TV food programme featuring cannibalism, do you think?

x