THE SIMPLE MAJESTY OF SAUSAGE ROLLS

Ready to rock your party guests' world, or just a tasty snack.

It's no secret that I enjoy many things from British culture, as is the case with many Americans, but I happen to be a Yank who absolutely loves British cooking. It's the epitome of “comfort food” and nothing exemplifies that to me more than the delicious simplicity of the humble sausage roll. If you think pigs in a blanket using cocktail weenies go over well as a party snack, these blow pigs in a blanket out of the water. All you need to make a big batch of these is the following:

2 pounds of thin breakfast link sausages (I prefer actual British-style chipolatas as obtained from Manhattan's Myers of Cheswick for their texture and seasoning, but Parks or Jones breakfast sausages will do just fine and they can be found at pretty much any local supermarket)

1 package of frozen puff pastry (I favor Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets)

NOTE: All food photos are from my kitchen (such as it is) and the batch of these I made tonight, in preparation to take a container of them home to my mother as a Christmas treat, so none of them were cribbed from the internet.

Get a type of sausage link that you enjoy (again, I cannot recommend fresh chipolatas enough), bake them at 325 for thirty minutes, then transfer them to a container for chilling overnight in fridge, making sure to pour the drippings over the sausages so they continue to steep in all of the goodness of the juices. 

A tray of baked chipolatas, just out of the oven.

Next day, take your frozen puff pastry dough and allow it to reach room temperature. (The average package of puff pastry dough contains two large sheets divided into three sections, so you should have enough to wrap roughly two pounds of sausages.)

 

One sheet of room-temperature puff pastry.

Lay out the sheets of pastry on a cutting surface. Line up sausages on the pastry. 

Eyeball however much may be needed to wrap individual sausages, cut pastry to size and wrap, making sure the seam is concealed underneath. 

Once the wrapping in done, cut each sausage into three bite-sized pieces and place on a non-stick surface for baking. 

Wrapped and sectioned. 

Ready for the oven.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. When the oven reaches proper heat, bake at the temperature and time-length stated on the pastry packing. (Pepperidge Farm states 15 minutes but I suggest 17, as that allows for a more crisp pastry effect.) When done, remove from oven, allow to cool, then serve. 

Fresh out of the oven.

Two pounds of sausage links yields approximately 48 bite-sized pieces, by the way, and if allowed to cool and stored in a container in he fridge, they last for several days and should be slowly reheated at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven. Easy-peasy.

In a storage container, ready to be sealed and refrigerated.

The perfect teatime treat.

EGGS IN A BASKET

First you start with frying up some bacon.

When the bacon is done to your liking, remove bacon and place on a paper towel to absorb grease. Pour off about 1/4 of the grease from the pan, and leave the pan on over a medium low heat for five minutes, allowing it to build some reasonable heat.

 

Then you take two slices of bread — here I used potato bread, because it grills well, though a good "country" or "peasant" bread will also do — and cut a hole in each with a shot glass, saving the circular bits that got cut out. Place the bread and the circular bits in the grease and grill a bit on both sides over medium high heat. 

 The bread should reach a level of firm toastedness almost equal to that of a grilled cheese sandwich.

When the bread is crisped to your liking, crack an egg into each of the two holes and season to taste. Salt and pepper are fine, with a light lashing of cayenne, but I recommend Badia complete seasoning (sason completa) for a more robust and memorable flavor.

After the eggs have cooked to your liking on one side, carefully flip with a solid spatula — meaning having no openings through which eggs can escape and allow the other side to briefly cook. (NOTE: You may need to supplement the greasy cooking medium with some butter, as the bacon grease may have been fully absorbed by the bread at this point.) 

When the eggs are cooked to your liking, plate with the bacon and have at it! If you like eggs with a runny yolk, as I do, this dish is sheer culinary bliss. You can also divide the strips of bacon into sections and place in the egg toast for quartering into more concise forkfuls of simultaneous bacon, egg, and bread.

Plated deliciousness.

 

The sectioned version,  with peasant bread, topped with thick-cut bacon.

 

Yes, it's a cholesterol festival, so only cook this as an occasional guilty treat.

NOLA RED BEANS a la ALLAN

Allan in his natural environment. (photoplasty by Jared)

Traditionally served on Mondays, this amazing dish was imparted to me by the one and only Allan Conner, a superb and kind sage who's the father of one of my dearest friends and is also a Louisiana native. He first told me of his formula for it during a discussion of our enjoyment of the red beans & rice side dish served at Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits locations, noting that he grew up making it from scratch and that it could not be easier. I took notes on the basics of the formula — he simply gave me the ingredients and a couple of pointers, taking into account that I already know my way around a kitchen; I appreciated that — and made a batch based strictly on his instructions. It was delicious, but I swapped out the Tasso ham (which is kind of difficult to find where I live) for Andouille sausages and substituted Goya ham-flavored seasoning for any required salt. Then, following my usual method when learning to make a dish from memory, I made two more batches over the next two weeks, refining my technique and memorizing the procedure to the point where I can now practically do it in my sleep. Allan told me in no uncertain terms that making this is easy, and after knowing the man for close to forty years, he once again proved to me that he's a man whose advice is to be accepted without hesitation. Anyway, that's the preamble, so let's get down to business:

INGREDIENTS

1 pound pinto/kidney beans (soaked overnight)

1 bunch of celery (finely chopped)

1 green bell pepper (finely chopped) 

1 large onion (finely chopped)

Cloves of smashed garlic (to taste; I use 5 or 6)

2 foot-long smoked Andouille sausages (finely chopped; Allan's version calls for Tasso ham, so use that if you have it available)

2 smoked ham hocks

Goya ham-flavored seasoning packets (to taste; I recommend starting with 2, seeing how that works for you, and adjusting from there)

48 ounces of chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (that amount is the recommended starter dose; adjust to taste)

Black pepper (to taste)

Bay leaves (2 or 3)

Dry thyme

Water (have 2 quarts on hand, to even out the level of liquid during cooking)

Ready to rock.

PROCEDURE

First of all, make sure you have soaked your beans overnight and chopped all of your  Andouille sausage and vegetables. Then take a large soup pot and add either oil or bacon grease — I favor bacon grease for flavor reasons — in an amount that will allow you to simmer the Andouille until its flavor has melded with the oil/grease. 

Simmer and stir the sausage for about five minutes, after which you will add all of the vegetables and cook them until they soften and get translucent. (Standard "holy trinity" procedure.) 

Then we add our drained beans to the pot, along with the ham hocks and chicken stock. Add enough water to cover the ham hocks, then add the seasonings to taste. Stir, and bring the pot to a boil. Lower the heat to a very low simmer and skim off any foam generated from the beans. 

This lovely mess will simmer slowly and must be periodically stirred until the ham hocks soften and fall apart, so we're talking around four hours, but I give it an extra hour, just to let the hocks really infuse into the beans. (Remember to taste, so you can gauge whether or not you need to adjust the seasonings.) And roughly halfway through the simmering, the beans should be soft enough for you to scoop out about a cup of them, mash them up, and return them to the pot, stirring to blend them back into the glorious simmering mess. That will serve to aid the thickening process as the vegetables melt, as well as upping the "beany" flavor.

About halfway through, with mashed beans blended into the glorious mess.

When all is said and done, your vegetables will have totally melted into the bean/pork amalgam, resulting in this shameless monument to utter deliciousness:

"This is so effin' delicious, I want to beget offspring with it!" — Jehovah  

Give everything a final stir, making sure the ham hocks have fallen apart and been blended into the main mass. Allow to cool, then transfer into containers and seal. Stash in the fridge to allow the sexy mess to find its flavor overnight, and then serve when you want to. It can be served over rice, as is traditional, but I like it  on its own. It's very filling, and a very small bowl will fuel an individual for a good while.  

Further proof that Sir Mix-a-Lot spoke truth.

MY GRANDMOTHER'S CLASSIC CHEESE EGGS, or "CHEESE EGGS A LA IRENE"

NOTE: Please pardon the unnecessarily wide spacing between this entry's paragraphs. I initially wrote and posted this on Facebook and remembered I should post it here, but, for whatever reason, this sort of paragraph spacing happens when I copy and paste from stuff posted on Facebook for use here. I have no idea why this happens and no amount of futzing with the formatting during the composition phase here on Blogger fixes the problem. Anyway, with that in mind, proceed.

The legacy of my maternal grandmother.

Every now and then my sleep cycle goes all wonky and I don't find myself being able to crash until sunrise or later. Such was the case with last night's attempt at slumber, so I believe I fell asleep somewhere around sunrise and was in and out of consciousness before fully rousing myself near 1pm. As my body's schedule was thrown off, I was not hungry when I awoke and would not desire anything eat for several more hours. By the time I was finally hungry, I did not feel like making anything schmancy, so I resorted to the go-to quick-but-delicious meal that is a signature of my mother's side of the family, namely my late grandmother's famed cheese eggs. Anyone can throw together cheese and eggs, but there's a special touch that one must develop in order to craft what my grandmother came up with, and the only living people that I know of who can do it are my mother and myself. (Though there was a line cook at a Waffle House in Marietta, Georgia who came very close, with the sole divergent factor being the use of bulk processed American cheese slices instead of quality grated sharp cheddar.)

The trick to "cheese eggs a la Irene" is to set up a non-stick sauce pan over very low heat and drop in a big dollop of butter. Allow the butter to melt, slowly stirring with a spatula or wooden spoon, until the butter has liquefied but it not sizzling. Crack two fresh jumbo eggs into the butter and season with black pepper to taste. Break the yolks and slowly blend the butter and eggs into a uniform liquid state with a whisk-like motion, still over very low heat. The low heat allows you to maintain tight control over the rate at which the eggs set, and the key here is to keep the eggs fluffy and soft, though cooked. Occasionally stir and flip the eggs as they begin to firm up, sometimes chopping into the mass to even out the distribution of thickening egg. As the eggs become near firm enough to solidify into a flippable omelet consistency, flip them with your spatula and chop into them again to even out the thickness. Then add however much grated sharp cheddar cheese as you like, blend it into the eggs and then remove the pan from heat. (Don't forget to turn off the heat. Always think safety in the kitchen!) Give the eggs one more flip, making sure they are cooked just past the runny stage, with the cheese now a lovely melted component, and transfer to a plate. Allow the eggs to sit for about a minute, as their own heat allows them to set just a tad more. What results is a gooey, cheddary delight that is delectable on its own (as seen above), but pair it with some buttered toast made with quality bread, or some fresh-from-the-oven biscuits, and you have an indelible reward for your palate. (Some friends for whom I've made this over the years love making biscuit sandwiches with cheese eggs and crispy bacon.)

Lastly, and this is an important note, though loaded with yummy cheese, do NOT refer to this dish as "cheesy eggs" in my presence, or I may be tempted to fuck you up so bad, someone will have to come over and fuck you back down. "Cheesy" connotes being of of poor quality, and I pride myself on my food's ability to delight those who devour it. These are CHEESE EGGS, and they are the polar opposite of "cheesy." PERIOD.

THE CLASSIC BUNCHE-STYLE BACON & EGG SAMMICH

This one's easy, and is a favorite that I've been making in one form or another since I was eight. It can be crafted from pretty much any variation of the to-be-described components, so what's related here reflects my own personal taste. By all means, experiment! Also keep in mind that this is best when care is taken in its preparation. This is not just a garden variety sarnie. It takes about twenty minutes from start to finish, but the textures and flavors are worth your diligence. Anyway, this is simplicity itself, so let's get started:

INGREDIENTS:

2 slices of European-style peasant bread (my preference; use whatever bread you like)
Butter
2 slices of the thickest bacon you can find (I favor E.J. Farms old-fashioned with rind on, or, if I'm miraculously rich, Peter Luger's)
1 jumbo egg
Black pepper

Evenly toast the beard (preferably in a toaster oven, as I firmly believe one has far more control over the level of crispness than with a standard toaster), then butter the resulting toast and set it aside. Then cook the bacon over low heat, occasionally flipping it as is browns. When it's done to your liking, remove from pan and drain on a paper towel, but do not turn the pan off. Keeping the heat on low, crack the egg into the pan and season with black pepper to taste. (The required salt content is found in the butter on the toast and in the bacon. No need to add more.) One the egg begins to cook, turn off flame and remove pan from heat. The egg will continue to cook as the pan cools and you will be able to observe and determine when it is done to your liking. Spatula the egg onto one of the slices of toast and arrange as evenly as possible. Use a soup spoon to scoop the yolk onto the other slice of toast and then place the bacon atop the egg. Flip the yolked toast onto the slice with bacon, press lightly to allow the yolk to absorb into the bread, cut in half, and let set while you pour yourself an accompanying drink. Devour.