Tasty Toad In The Hole

On Sunday we popped to the local farmers market.  I picked up a couple of locally handmade candles, in sweetpea and floral freesia fragrances, yum!  I also bought a customary sausage roll for my daughter.  Funnily enough the longest word she can currently say at 22 months is "would-you-like-a-sausage-roll-yes-please-mum!"  She is definitely my daughter!  While I was there I bought some plain pork, free range, rare breed sausages.  Seeing as I was cooking them for tea tonight, I figured I would share my recipe as batter can be a tricky one and I always, ALWAYS make my own Yorkshires from scratch.

This is a no frills teatime recipe.  I have used mainly value ingredients as I think it makes no difference to the taste (isn't everything expensive enough these days?!) and splashed out on some really good quality sausages.

Ingredients:

100g plain flour

Pinch salt

2 small/med eggs

100ml milk

3tbsp sunflower oil

6 good quality sausages

1 medium onion

A splash of vinegar

Approx 50ml water

*If you notice in the photo I used vegetable oil, but do prefer to use sunflower oil.  I just made do with what I had.  Please don't make this with olive oil!!!! You need an oil that you can take to a high temperature before it catches.  If you use olive oil, you will set off all the smoke alarms!

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 240oc/gas mark full whack!

2.  Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.  Make a well in the centre and whisk in the eggs and then gradually mix in the milk and water, whisking all the time to prevent the mixture going lumpy.  Your mixture should make a clip-clop-plip-plop noise when stirred and dropped (this is how my mother taught me.)  If it feels a little thick add a touch more water to the mixture.

3.  Add a few drops of vinegar to the mixture.  Don't worry about over whisking at this point.

4.  Chop the onion into 6 wedges and put into a medium sized oven proof dish.

5.  Put 2tbsp of oil into dish.  Heat in the oven for 15 minutes.  (Its really important you heat it for 15 minutes. 10 minutes is not enough, you need it to really be sizzling (starting to smoke) and start cooking instantly when the batter hits the oil.  My oil wasn't quite hot enough when I added the batter and it really shows.  Although it was very yummy, I've had much more successful huge impressive batters than this one.  I guess that is the nature of the beast ;o)

6.  Put the remaining oil in a frying pan and quickly brown the sausages.  While the sausages are colouring, whisk the batter like the clappers, then whisk a little more!

7.  Carefully take the dish out of the oven, quickly add the sausages and batter and return to the oven.  Cook in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes, before turning the heat down to 220oc and cooking for a further 20-30 minutes. Do not be tempted to open the oven during cooking time as this will result in a poor rise.

 

I can tell you it tasted fantastic and the posh sausages really made the difference.  Yum yum, I'm stuffed!