Pork, Leek & Apple Sausage Rolls of much deliciousness

I had been wanting to make sausage rolls for a very long time.  However, because my last few batches of sausage rolls had received something of a lacklustre review from the assembled throng, I was nervous.

Then, whilst pondering on what to do with a little bag of pulled pork that was left over when I portioned out the 2kg joint, I had what appeared to be a Very Good Idea.

The pulled pork wasn't enough to make anything except a sandwich on its own, but bolstered by something else (like sausage meat), it would make a grand ingredient.

So what is the obvious thing to make, when contemplating sausage meat?  Well, yes, I admit - Scotch Eggs was right up there.  However, because of hubby's sensitivity to eggs that wasn't too clever an option.  No, but in the savoury baking line, sausage rolls were a definite possibility!

I pondered on what type of sausage meat to use.  There are so many different types out there in the marketplace, the world is your oyster where making sausage rolls is concerned.  However, I wanted to keep the pork theme going - and I remembered that our local butcher had some lovely fat Pork & Leek sausages.  Now there's a bit of a problem with our butcher's sausages in that they can be dreadfully salty.  However, I reckoned that with the pulled pork in the mix, it might very well help to alleviate some of the saltiness - as would the pastry.

However, thinking about how the combination would taste - after all, the pulled pork was cooked in a vegetable stock so wouldn't really be bringing much in the way of flavour (other than its porkiness) but loads in the way of texture to the table - I felt it needed something else.  All the flavours, so far, were very savoury - what about a sweet note?  I considered the onion marmalade we'd bought at the Dorset Smokery, but felt that would dominate over the leek.  What would let all the other flavours sing, whilst providing a sweet note?  AHA!  Apple.  Something sharp but sweet, like a Braeburn or Cox's.  Not a cooker like a Bramley, as that would cook down to mush, but something that would hold its shape.  Plus, it just so happened that I had a homeless Braeburn in the fridge.

There, the sausage rolls were sorted.  It was a simple matter of chopping the pulled pork a couple of times to reduce the length of each strand, dicing the apple very finely and mushing the whole lot together with some skinned pork & leek sausages.

Wrap the whole lot up in some puff pastry (I really must learn how to make that stuff), egg wash and bake.

Happiness!  I served mine for a main course along with baked beans and hash browns.

Whatever you might require sausage rolls for - and let's face it, there's a million reasons to have a sausage roll - these will do the job.  Cut them big for taking to firework parties, cut them small for buffets and picnics.  The flavours are just brilliant - the apple worked so well - and the whole filling is just big, rewarding and flavoursome.  These aren't your mean, all-pastry-and-no-sausage supermarket sausage rolls - and they definitely aren't those nasty bright pink pap-filled things that you get from your local baker's chain.  These are real sausage rolls - and an excellent reason to hold onto a little bag of leftovers from the next pulled pork!


PORK, LEEK & APPLE SAUSAGE ROLLS   (makes 12)

Ingredients :

150g shredded pulled pork, any large pieces chopped smaller
6 large pork & leek sausages, skins removed
1 Braeburn apple, cored, peeled and chopped finely
2 sheets of pre-made puff pastry (around 650g)
1 egg yolk, beaten lightly.

Method :

1.  Into a large bowl, add the shredded pulled pork, the sausage meat and apple pieces.

2.  Squish and mix with your fingers until the ingredients are all evenly distributed.  You shouldn't need to season, as the sausage meat should be able to do the seasoning for you.

3.  Unroll the first pastry sheet and run a rolling pin over it lightly, just to flatten it.

4.  Cut in half (across the shorter side) with a sharp knife.

5.  Take a quarter of the sausage meat mixture and form into a sausage shape slightly in from one side of the pastry.  Take the meat right up to the edge of the pastry.

6.  Brush a little egg yolk onto the other side of the pastry and starting with the sausage meat side, roll over onto the egg yolk side.

7.  Give the roll a little press to make sure it forms a good round shape and press along the edge of the cut side of the pastry, to secure it to the roll.

8.  With a very sharp knife, cut into three smaller sausage rolls and place onto a baking tray.

9.  Repeat for the remains of the pastry.  You should, therefore, have made four large sausage rolls, that are cut into 12 smaller ones.

10.  Slash the top of the pastry lightly on each sausage roll, then brush with egg yolk.

11.  Put into a pre-heated oven at 200degC/400degF/Gas6, for 35-45 minutes or until the pastry is crispy and golden.

12.  Cool slightly before serving.

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Sweet Chilli Pork Stir Fry - or "how to use the other half of your pulled pork"

This is the final destination of the other half of our pulled pork joint.

Now it was supposed to be a "sort of" roast dinner - with accompanying roast potatoes, parsnips, butternut squash, Yorkshire Puddings and gravy etc.  However, we forgot to take one of the tubs of stock out of the freezer at the same time as the pork, which meant that we'd have to forgo using it to make the amazing gravy - which would be a shame.  True, I could have got it out anyway and defrosted it in the pan - but in the time before I was due to start making dinner, I started to think sideways.

Initially, I started to think about gravy alternatives such as making a sauce.  I contemplated fruity sauces, but couldn't think of anything that didn't demand going out to the local Sainsbury's for supplies - and I didn't want to have to do that.  I seriously contemplated making an onion sauce, mainly because I love onion sauce and haven't had it for an aeon.  I thought it would go quite well with the pork (even better with lamb - but we didn't have any of that) and onion sauce always goes well with vegetables and roasties.  However, when I contemplated the washing up that would result at the end of the dinner, that put me off the sauce idea completely.

After all, I'd have a pyrex dish for the pork to be heated up in, the roasting tray for the roasties and a pyrex bowl that I'd used to oil and season them in, another tray for the Yorkshires, the three-part steamer pan for the other vegetables - and that was before I'd begun to think about the gravy or a sauce!  I was going off the idea rapidly.

So I began to think even further sideways - about things that weren't roast dinners.  Now, what would I be likely to do with some leftover roast pork, if I wasn't going to make it into a roast?

Wraps - I could put it in wraps with some BBQ sauce.  Don't have any wraps though - and don't want to have to go out and get some.  A pie - it'd make a nice pie.  Mind you, then I'd have to make pastry - and I refer you back to the washing up problem.  So what doesn't make a lot of washing up?  Hmmn .. something made in the wok.  Aha - now we're onto something.  A stir-fry.  Oh, but son & heir doesn't like stir fries - and I don't have any traditional stir fry vegetables in.  Well yes, but this IS pulled pork we're talking about stir frying - and son & heir is a sucker for pulled pork.  Add some chilli to the lure and I'm sure he'll forgive the stir fry effect.  So what vegetables have I got?  A red pepper .. two courgettes .. the taggy end of a head of broccoli and plenty of onions.  Wish I had some mushrooms!

So okay, what sauce could I put the whole thing in?  I've got a Blue Dragon Black Bean sauce, but one won't be enough and anyway, I don't fancy the oh-so-savoury route.  Wish I had some Hoi Sin sauce!  I've got Oyster sauce .. hmmn, once again not enough.

It was about this time that I remembered I had a bottle of Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce in the cupboard that we'd not tried as yet.  I knew I also had a part-used bottle of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce in the fridge.  The sweet chilli was going down the right flavour route - sweet and hot - and the BBQ sauce would add the complexity to the flavours.  Add a little bit of Mirrin (Japanese rice wine) and a dash of Fish Sauce and I reckon we'd have it.  I had the bottle of Cider Vinegar standing by, just in case the whole thing came up too sweet - but didn't need it.

The vegetables behaved themselves in the pan and I even got to exercise a tip I'd seen demonstrated on the t.v. - that of stir frying the onions and peppers, then including a small amount of water in the wok and steaming the remaining vegetables for 2-3 minutes, before continuing the stir frying.  I did this just after including the broccoli pieces and it worked like a charm.  The combination of the two sauces was a complete masterstroke, if I say so myself - and the whole thing came together in what felt like minutes.  The washing up consisted of two pans and a chopping board - can't complain about that - and best of all, it was flipping delicious.

As a last-minute avoidance of making a roast dinner, I'd say that was a complete score!

As regards the Mic's Chilli Sweet Chilli Sauce, what a winner that is!  I'd already got a huge bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce on the go - and had been waiting to finish that before breaking out the Mic's Chilli version.  However, the Thai one is so rampant with garlic that I didn't fancy including it in the stir fry or we'd have been burping garlic for ever more.  Mic's Chilli's Sweet Chilli Sauce has a degree of garlic - much as you'd expect - but it also has some lovely deep toffee flavours going on in there.  The chilli effect, for all that it declares itself to be just "one chilli hot" was still pretty darned awesome when combined with a dash of Chinese five spice and the BBQ sauce!

So there you are - want something different to do with the other half of a pulled pork joint?  Raid the fridge! 


SWEET CHILLI PORK STIR FRY   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 medium onions, peeled, quartered and sliced thickly
1 red capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and sliced thinly
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 courgette, sliced into batons
4 broccoli florets, quartered
500g cold cooked pulled pork
100ml sweet chilli sauce
75ml barbecue sauce
1 tbsp Mirrin
1 tbsp Fish sauce.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a wok and add the onions.  Cook on a high temperature until softened and just beginning to caramelise, stirring all the time, then add the red pepper.  Continue cooking and stirring until the red pepper has softened.

2.  Add the five spice and stir to combine.  Add the courgette pieces together with the broccoli and continue to cook and stir for another couple of minutes.  Add approx 100ml of warm water and cover the pan.  Let the contents steam for around 3-5 minutes, pausing to stir once in this process.

3.  Add the pork, chilli sauce, barbecue sauce, mirrin and fish sauce and stir to combine.

4.  Turn the heat down and cook for another few minutes, to allow the flavours to marry up and the pork to heat through sufficiently.

5.  Serve on a bed of white rice.

Printable recipe

Slow Cooker Braised Pulled Pork

Oh my goodness, but this Pulled Pork interest is turning up some cracking recipes!

This one came about because we just couldn't resist a piece of pork shoulder that had been marked down in Asda.  Needless to say, we put it straight into the freezer and then worked out what to do with it.

There was some interest in keeping it for Christmas, but when we thought about Christmas, there didn't seem to be a space for it in our plans.  Then, when son & heir's birthday hove into view and we needed to devote many pennies to that cause, we began to wonder what we had in the freezer that could be press-ganged into use.  The obvious thing to do with the pork was to just roast it and have it for Sunday lunch.

However, because the BBQ pulled pork that I'd made was so good, I was interested in carrying it a little bit sideways and maybe not involving so many flavours, but letting the pork speak for itself.

It was a big old piece - around 2kg - and so it would be perfect for this, as we could dress the leftovers any way we wanted with additional flavours and so transform the piece of pork into several dishes.

So it was decided.  I'd put the pork into the slow cooker with the normal collection of stock vegetables and we'd have a pulled pork roast dinner, then decide what to do with the rest another day.

Oh yes.  That worked - it worked beautifully.

I put the pork into the slow cooker at around 9.30 a.m. - accompanied by the usual suspects of carrots, celery, garlic, onion, parsley etc.  I kept the cooker on high all day, as it really was a very chunky piece of pork and I did want to pull it apart.

When it came time to remove the pork, my goodness but it was just falling apart.  Because I'd left the thick fat along the top, this had been slowly rendering down all day and trickling through the meat, keeping it succulent and juicy.

Now normally, I'd run the stock through a sieve and throw away the stock veggies - which always hurt, as they look so soft and unctuous after cooking with the meat.  It really is a wonder I hadn't thought of doing this myself - but I recently saw a lady on t.v. use a hand held blender to whizz the stock veggies into the stock for an incredibly tasty gravy.  This fits so well with my "don't waste a thing!" ethos that I had resolved to do the same the first chance I got.

So I picked out the woody stems of the herbs, plus the garlic.  I'm not that keen on heavily garlicked gravies and sauces - but feel free to leave them there if you try this and are very keen on garlic!  The stock veggies didn't argue and disappeared into a lovely russet coloured, enriched stock - which tasted absolutely divine.

I added a little Essential Cuisine Veal stock powder (just a small teaspoonful) to help bring out the meatiness, plus a little salt and pepper and it was ready for thickening into a gorgeous gravy.

I've frozen another two helpings of the stock, one to go with the other half of the pork - which I've also frozen - and another which may very well become soup!  Liquid gold!

The pork, with some gravy and a dot of apple sauce, was utterly gorgeous.  No other word for it.  Soft, tender, unctuous, well flavoured, sweet, savoury, tiny sour notes from the apples - just divine.

For me, this pork beat the BBQ version into a cocked hat.  Given the choice, I'd have this one any day - and BBQ it up, if I wanted it to go that way!

So the next time you have a piece of pork shoulder that you don't know what to do with, either break out the slow cooker, or put it in the bottom of the oven on low for some 8 hours or so.  You won't regret it!

SLOW COOKER BRAISED PULLED PORK  (serves 6-7)

Ingredients :

2kg piece of pork shoulder, fat and skin on
1 large carrot, sliced thickly
2 large celery sticks, chopped into large pieces
2 garlic cloves, still in their jackets but bashed with the back of a knife
1 onion, peeled and cut into 4 quarters
1 bunch parsley (around 10g)
1 bunch tarragon (around 10g)
1 Knorr chicken stock pot
1 Knorr herb infusion stock pot
sea salt & black pepper
1 tsp veal stock powder (optional)
cornflour.

Method :

1.  Fairly early in the morning, place the carrot pieces into the bottom of the slow cooker to form a trivet.

2.  Place the pork - skin side up - on the carrots.

3.  Throw the remaining ingredients except the stock pots, into the slow cooker with gay abandon.

4.  Make up the two stock pots (together in the same jug) with 800g hot water and decant into the slow cooker.

5.  Sprinkle the top of the pork with a tiny pinch of sea salt and a whole heap of black pepper.

6.  Put the lid on, turn it on to High and forget about it for the next 7 hours.

7.  Remove the lid and place the pork onto a warmed plate.  Cover with tin foil and leave to rest while you deal with the stock.

8.  Remove the garlic (unless you're particularly keen on garlicky gravy!) and the woody stems of the herbs and discard.

9.  Blitz with a hand-held blender until all the vegetables have disappeared.

10.  Decant as much of the stock as you anticipate you'll need for gravy into a saucepan.  the remainder can be cooled and frozen for use another day.

11.  To thicken the gravy, use approximately 1 tablespoonful of cornflour per third of the quantity of the stock.  So, if you're using all the stock, you'll need around 3 tablespoonfuls.  I used a third of the stock, so I used just the one tablespoonful.  Slake the cornflour with a little water, until you have a runny paste.

12.  Pour half the cornflour mixture into the gravy and begin to heat it through to a simmer, whisking all the time to prevent the gravy forming lumps.  Once it has thickened, you will be able to know how much of the remainder of the cornflour you will need to obtain your preferred thickness.

13.  Once the gravy is done, uncover the pork and carefully remove the skin and thick fat.  (You can hang this fat from the nearest tree for the birdies, once it has cooled.  It's also good entertainment for the local cats and dogs - who will sit beneath it trying to exercise telekinesis in order to get at it).  Begin to pull the meat apart into shreds.  This is a perfect opportunity to remove any lumpy bits of fat, which are quite unpleasant to discover on your fork.

14.  You can serve this pork in any way you so desire.  I served mine as part of a roast dinner.

Printable version

 

Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork - perfect for winter!

I've been eyeing up various recipes for pulled pork for a very long time.  The reasons I hadn't got around to making it until now, were firstly because we didn't have a barbecue to cook it on and secondly, when we did have a barbecue, it rained.  And rained.  And threw it down - repeatedly.

Then, however, I saw a blog posting from a lady (forgive me, but I've forgotten who it was and on which blog I saw it - should've made a note!) who had experimented with cooking pulled pork in the slow cooker, with amazing results.

Bing!  Genius.

Now I'd have thought that the slow cooker would have resulted in the pork becoming too soft and not having that roasted flavour that is essential to a good pulled pork recipe.  How wrong was I?

So this Pulled Pork recipe was a bit of a major production in time, if not in effort.  Nope, it definitely didn't involve a lot of effort.  I simply prepared the pork by trimming it a little bit, then rubbed it with a whole heap of spices and flavours (chipotle chilli, English mustard, smoked paprika, garlic, brown sugar) and left it to marinate overnight.

What started out as one piece, fell into four after 12 hrs!

The following day, first thing in the morning, open up the slow cooker, open up the plastic bag in which the pork was marinating - and bung the contents into the cooker.  Tip half a jar of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce over the poor confused piece of piggy - turn the cooker to low - and forget about it for the rest of the day.

Some 12 hours later, put some chips on to cook (deep fry them if you must - but oven baked curly fries did the job for us) and prepare your sub rolls.

Lift the pork from the slow cooker and pull it apart with two forks - just like you've seen them do it on the t.v.  Now - this is the tricky bit.  Try, really really hard, not to eat too much before you can get it onto the sub rolls.  Yes, I know it's difficult - so, so difficult - but this was intended to be a meal for the whole family with leftovers - remember?

See that apple sauce peeking out?  Yum.

Because I'm a rampant traditionalist at heart, I gave my sub rolls a liberal coating of apple sauce - and not the American type of apple sauce that is nigh on liquid, the type that has chunks of apple in it and is closer to a tart jam.  The pulled pork then went on top, with a scoop of the liquid from the slow cooker on top (and boy, that "sauce" was amazing!).

My menfolk eschewed the apple sauce version and went for a liberal coating of the El Loco BBQ Sauce on their rolls, with pork on top and the slow cooker juices poured on.

Oh my gawd, but it was good.

Now okay, I'll accept that it didn't have the charred flavour that you would have got from the barbecue, but there were so many deep and meaningful flavours going on there anyway, that we really didn't miss it.  I'm sure that, had we have finished the pork on the barbecue, it would have taken on a completely sublime flavour - but just straight from the slow cooker was pretty darned awesome.

So for people who don't have a garden, or a barbecue, you too can have pulled pork!  Either cook it - well wrapped - for 12 hours in an extremely low oven, or break out the slow cooker.

Oh my - just the memory of this pork is making my mouth water.  The weekend is coming - hi thee down to your local butcher and get a pork shoulder.  You'll be glad you did!

SLOW COOKER BBQ PULLED PORK   (serves 3-5)

Ingredients :

1kg boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of extraneous fat
1 chipotle chilli
1 tbsp English mustard powder
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
half a tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 clove of garlic, grated
around 200ml of prepared BBQ sauce (as in Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce).

Method :

1.  Into a large freezer bag (one large enough to take the pork as well), add all the dry ingredients and the garlic.  Mix well.

2.  Add the pork and seal the bag.  Then massage the meat through the bag, ensuring that the rub ingredients reach every single little bit of the meat.  Once well covered and well rubbed in, leave to marinate in the fridge for around 12 hours (overnight is best!).

You may well find it necessary to double bag the pork, to resist your fridge contents smelling of BBQ garlic!

3.  Take the pork out of the fridge and allow it to return to room temperature (around 30 minutes).

4.  Decant the pork straight from the bag into the slow cooker - along with any juices.

5.  Pour the barbecue sauce over the pork, ensuring it is well covered.

6.  Turn the slow cooker for low and leave for 12 hours.

7.  When done, remove from the cooker and cover with silver foil.  Allow to rest for 15 minutes or so, then pull apart with two forks to create the classic "pulled pork" look.

8.  Serve in baps or sub rolls, with apple sauce, additional BBQ sauce, some salad or anything you fancy additionally.  Don't forget to add a spoonful or two of the juices from the slow cooker on the top of the pork once it has been laid into the roll.

Delicious!

Printable version

 

 

Back in the comfort zone - this week's menu plan

For all that I'm always very glad to get into salad weather, I will admit to finding it difficult to ring sufficient changes where salad is concerned.  We do tend to get pretty darned bored with it.  I've tried warm salads, fruity salads, green salads, mayonnaise salads (such as pasta or potato), but it seems as though when the weather starts to take a turn for the autumnal I breathe a sigh of relief as I start thinking casserole and stew.

Autumn always has been my favourite time of year.  When I still had the horses, I loved those mornings when the sun came up across the dew-laden field and the horses, still bare-backed and rugless but just starting to grow their thick winter coat, would leave trails as they brushed through the grass on their way in to breakfast.  The spiders webs would be jewelled with dew and everything smelled freshly washed.  Such a relief from the baked and parched dustiness of the mid-summer field.

Just this morning, son & heir commented on a spider's web that we passed on the way to school.  On any other morning you would never notice it, but the sun had caught its threads and turned them silver and there it was, in all its complex and fragile beauty.

Sounds a bit like me, "complex and fragile" - especially in the morning.

So Autumn is ordinarily a time of bounty.  A time when the plants and trees are putting out their best seeds and fruits.  However, I wonder how much damage has been done by the weird summer we had, as I've already noticed a Blue Tit checking out our seed feeder on several occasions.  I'd have thought that, ordinarily, there'd be plenty of natural feed for the likes of him - but perhaps not, if he's already looking to augment his diet.  Perhaps a hint of food shortages to come for all of us!

Anyway, for this week's menus, I've taken a large step away from the salads and into more robust - but hopefully still fairly healthy (on the whole) - foods.  Here's what's on the list :

Tues : Smoked Haddock Chowder and crusty rolls

Weds : Chipotle meatballs in tomato sauce, with pasta

Thurs : Steak pie with broccoli, parsnips & carrots

Fri : Pulled pork rolls with BBQ sauce and curly fries

Sat : Minced Beef Wellington with savoy cabbage, turnip and carrots

Sun : Slow cooker beef cobbler, with roast parsnips, broad beans, savoy cabbage and celeriac

Mon : Sausage casserole, with mashed potato and peas.

I doubt that there's anything on that list that would stop the culinary world in its tracks (is there ever?), but its all food that we'll enjoy eating and I have no doubts about.

Tonight's Smoked Haddock Chowder is a family favourite that we haven't had since the winter.  I've refined the recipe a little over the years, to make it suitable for hubby's dislike of potato (I used Canellini beans instead) and dislike of thin soups (I make sure it is considerably thicker than most Chowders appear to be, from their pictures).  The soup is now a perfect candidate for a main course soup, as by the time you've eaten an entire bowlful you definitely are warm from the inside out - and certainly aren't hungry any more!

Tomorrow's Chipotle meatballs and pasta are an opportunity to use some of the Sainsbury's Speciality Ingredients' chipotle paste.  Son & heir loves his meatballs in tomato sauce and we haven't had those for ages, so he'll be happy and I'll get to try out the chipotle paste.  Seems like a done deal, to me!

Me, by the time I get home  :)

Thursday's Steak Pie will be a shop-bought pie, as there is every possibility that we'll be taking a drive to Southampton to visit the Apple Store there (think computers, not fruit).  We'll need something that doesn't involve lots of cooking processes after that sort of drive.  It's not a difficult drive, but I certainly know I've done it by the end of it!

I'm looking forward to Friday's Pulled pork rolls, as I've seen so many recipes go by for pulled pork and they have - to a man - made my mouth water.  I just need to find a roll that is robust enough to cope with the pork without dissolving.  I'll be serving them with some of Mic's Chilli's El Loco BBQ sauce and have a yen for some apple sauce, too.  Of course there'll be curly fries served alongside, it just wouldn't be right without them!

Om nom nom!  No wonder we like it!

There's another blast from the past scheduled for Saturday - Jamie Oliver's Minced Beef Wellington.  I've made this on a couple of occasions and it always went down very well with the family throng.  It's a good hearty meal that contains lots of "hidden" veggies - not to mention the veggies that I'll be serving alongside - and is a good excuse for some more gravy made with Knorr's extra beefy stock pots.

There's another excuse for rich beefy gravy on Sunday, too!  Yay!  I remembered a recipe that I'd seen in Clarissa Dickson-Wright's "Potty" (a cook book of one-pot dishes) for a Beef Cobbler made with ale and walnuts.  I'll be cooking the beef in the slow cooker, only adding the cobbler scones for the last couple of hours - so it should be absolutely gorgeous.  We'll have roast parsnips, savoy cabbage and celeriac with it - and some broad beans if I think it needs them.  The cobbler will have lovely slow cooked carrots in it, so it's very definitely a good autumnal warmer.

Next one up on the schedule is a good old Sausage casserole, which is just perfect for soaking up all the little bits of leftover vegetables and clearing your fridge out.  Being on Monday, if we're a bit light on bits of leftover vegetables, a quick stop at the supermarket will soon furnish us with a few to bolster the numbers.  I don't think that there is a definitive "Sausage Casserole" recipe, it seems to me to be a "brown the sausages, cook onion, add in chunks of whatever you like, add gravy, cook in oven until tender" job.  Add to the plate some lovely fluffy white mashed potato and a few peas and the job's done.  Perfect!

I should open a "British Comfort Food" restaurant.  I bet it'd do well as there has to be more than just me out there who loves this type of food!

Now, a couple of little points of interest for you - or I hope they'll be points of interest for you!  Firstly, Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb & Ginger has just passed its second birthday!  It happened on the 22nd August, while I was busy thinking about other things.  So happy belated birthday, blog - here's to many more!

Secondly, another bit of good news is that I looked on the Alldishes rankings this morning, to see whether things had improved since getting back in the blogging saddle after my illness - and we're up to number 10!  Yay!  So thank you all for sticking with me while I was being extremely slow in updating - here's to next year, when hopefully I won't be struck down by some nasty August virus!