Toad in the Hole and how to Avoid Kitchen Murder

British Entree

TOAD IN THE HOLE

INGREDIENTS

1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
3 eggs
1¼ cups milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (2 more tablespoons later)
2 pounds bangers or plain pork sausages or beef sausages
¼ teaspoon rosemary
¼ teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion
½ tablespoon brown sugar
¾ cup beef stock

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Combination 8″ x 12″ casserole dish & time machine (They’re handy!)

Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add flour, mustard powder, and salt to 1st mixing bowl. Blend with whisk. Melt butter. Add eggs to 2nd bowl. Beat eggs with whisk. Add melted butter and milk to eggs. Mix thoroughly with whisk. Add liquid contents of 2nd bowl to flour in 1st bowl. Blend with whisk until mixture becomes smooth bread pudding. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes.

While pudding sits, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat sides and bottom of casserole dish with oil. Put casserole dish in oven. Raise temperature to 425 degrees. When oven temperature reaches 425 degrees, remove casserole dish. Add sausages evenly to casserole dish. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes or until sausages start to brown on all sides. You might need to turn them over at least once. (Be careful! Use oven mitts!) Remove casserole dish from oven. Pour bread budding over sausages. Sprinkle with rosemary and thyme. Put casserole dish back in oven. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or until toothpick stuck into batter comes out clean.

While batter bakes, mince onion. Add onion and 2 tablespoons to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add brown sugar and beef stock. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Ladle this beef stock/onion gravy over bread pudding and sausages in casserole dish.

TIDBITS

1) Sometimes it can be quite hard to track down every ingredient listed in a recipe, even when you think they should be easy to find.

2) In the case of this recipe, bangers were the items that were hard to track down. Impossible even. There’s a small discount supermarket (Small supermarket is a bit of contradiction, isn’t it?) that occasionally carries bangers, the British sausage. Occasionally. When it’s overstocked somewhere in San Diego County. How often does that happen? *Bangs head against wall*

3) Sorry for the delay in writing this tidbit, I had a headache from banging my head against the wall.

4) But wait, there was no delay for you, was there? It’s kinda like having your own time-travel machine.

5) Anyway, if you can’t find bangers nearby, try and get plain pork sausages. If your supermarkets don’t have such things, try and get beef sausages.

6) Don’t settle for tiny breakfast sausages. Just don’t. The sausages will settle under this dish’s bread pudding. Your guests will make remarks that while meant to be witty, will come across as being ungrateful and mean. You will race to your closet to get your saber. All sorts of boxes full of stuff you don’t even remember will fall on your head. Your headache will come roaring back as if The HulkTM himself is squeezing your skull. You will be in no mood to see reason. You will skewer all your guests, dispatching them with a hearty “Take that” or “Ho, ho.”

7) The law will take a dim view of such stuff. No, not the screaming of “Take that” or “Ho, ho,” rather the offing of your diners. It bears repeating, police don’t like premeditated murder or even manslaughter in this case. On the other hand, they’re remarkably tolerant of what you say while killing someone. They know if you’re so disturbed as to end someone’s life, you’re not going to be at your literary best. To save yourself embarrassment, may I suggest picking up a copy of 101 Clever Things to Say While Murdering?

8) So murder is out. You will need to create your own bangers. A banger is 65% pork sausage, 30% tusk (dried bread), and 5% seasonings. Simply, take your Bushnell 457 Sausage InjectorTM and fill it with a mixture of 5 parts dried bread to 1 part seasonings. Then inject the tusk/seasoning mix into the plain pork sausage until the ratio of pork sausage to mix is 13 to 7.

9) It does take practice to get the pork sausage/seasoning mix proportion just right. It takes even more practice to inject a lot of mixture into a sausage that already fills in casing completely. In fact, you’re almost certain to explode the sausage, causing you to fly into a rage, fly to your closet to get that saber again, and dispatch the first guest who even comes into your kitchen. That would be bad, run-on sentences like this are horrible.

10) Oh and Bushnell 457 Sausage Injectors are truly hard to find. The company stop making them in 2014. Which is why you simply must have a Bushnell 323 Combination Casserole Dish & Time MachineTM. Simply go back to a time when your local discount supermarket carried bangers. Then use that same gizmo to bake this entree. See? Life is good after all. Thank you, Bushnell.

Chef Paul