Tag: sausages

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Autumn fare

This will be our third autumn in the caravan, although we should be in the house at last before winter sets in and so it will be our last.

The tiny caravan kitchen space and mini oven have certainly been a challenge, but it’s amazing what you can do with a bit of ingenuity and a single cake and roasting tin. If I’d thought we’d be here so long I would have packed more.

As the season turns and the evenings get colder, my thoughts for food turn to more autumnal fare. Sausages, roasted squash, chestnuts, warming soups.. and wherever possible recipes adapted to work in a small space with the minimum of fuss and need for utensils.

One of my favourite ways to cook at this time of the year is a tray bake. Last nights supper was sausage, butternut squash and apple roasted up with onions and garlic and finished with honey and mustard for the last ten minutes in the oven.

If I’d picked blackberries I would have added those in too. Next time.

A supper like this is a meal in itself, both warming and filling, not expensive to produce, and most importantly, leaving very little washing up.

Birthday cake for a friend

September is also the month in which many local friends have their birthdays (as well as my own), so for the last year my one square cake tin will get pressed into action.

Next year my baking tins will be unpacked and I will have a proper oven, and I’ll hardly know myself! But for now my offerings are slightly lopsided, as the caravan is not entirely level, and always the same shape.

I hope that they’re well received regardless, baked as they are with love.

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Going back to proper meat

Since lockdown began and we started experiencing problems with supermarket deliveries, I began to source alternative places to buy meat online.

It’s proved to be a revelation and I’m not going back. It may be more expensive, but I’ll balance that by buying cheaper cuts of meat and buying less often.

I found an award winning organic pork producer in Lincolnshire who makes the most delicious sausages I’ve ever eaten. Plain pork, pork and apple, smoked pork, pork and leek – they’ve all been so good that I now get a regular fortnightly order delivered. We freeze them and use them crisped to perfection in butties or baked in lentil casseroles.

An old fashioned butcher who sells the cheaper cuts of meat as well as high end ones, and who delivers? I’ve found one in South East London. We’ve been enjoying beef short ribs and steaks from old cows that have huge depth of flavour, and also oxtail, brisket, flank, skirt, and onglet yet to try.

Cuts that I remember my mother cooking many years ago, but which I’ve rarely if ever seen in supermarket fridges recently.

These cuts take longer to cook, often simmered or roasted slowly for hours in order to release their flavour and render down into tenderness, but as time isn’t an issue at the moment, I’m glad to rediscover these skills, and the results are delicious.

I think that small businesses need all the help that they can get at the moment, and I want to support companies that produce organic, great quality produce.

I am one of the many millions in the U.K. that stopped using these businesses regularly some years ago when time was at a premium, and when long business hours meant that convenience was the most important thing to us. It was too easy to click and add all that I needed for the week in a one-stop shop.

No more. I don’t want to be in a position where we no longer have the choice, which is where we were headed.

If nothing else, this awful virus has shown me that we need to live more slowly and mindfully, and that there is a better way. With better quality, better tasting food and people that care how it’s produced.