Emma's homemade, not shit, toad-in-the-hole.

Last week, whilst driving into work and trying to avoid the awful “call or delete” Radio 1 insist on playing every Wednesday, I tuned into Radio 2. Chris Evans had proclaimed it National Toad-in-the-Hole Day and had a range of TV chefs on the phone to tell everyone how to make it great. I don’t know who the first one on the line was, but he was called Mark. Mark proceeded to tell us how you can’t get the batter to rise as you would with a Yorkshire pud because there was no hot fat. He then carried on describing the process, seeming to do it mostly in a frying pan, chopping up the sausages and adding thyme to the batter, which, horror of horrors, he’d made with water!

Then came Tom Kerridge, not a chef I’ve watched but my dad (ex-head chef) seemed to like his roast potatoes, so I don’t think he can be all bad. He didn’t seem to like the idea of water in batter either but he started by telling everyone to make the batter the day before to rest it, and (making the whole enterprise pointless) cooking batter and sausage separately. That’s not a toad-in-the-hole, that’s a sausage with a Yorkshire pud.

Last came James Martin. “Here we go,” I thought, “a bit of sense, none of this ‘chopping sausages up’ nonsense, this will be good.” The first words out of his mouth were “weigh out 400g of flour…”

I turned him off. You don’t need to weigh for the batter, it’s done by volume. So, since no one seems to know how to make a decent one, I give you Emma’s Homemade, not shit, Toad-in-a-hole.

Emma’s Homemade, not shit, Toad-in-a-hole (for 2)

Two eggs

Plain flour

Milk

Sage (or any other herbs, fresh or dried)

Sausages

When Tom Kerridge said make the batter and give it time to rest, I think he was right. When he said it needed to be left overnight I think he may have been overdoing it. I make my batter first and it then has the time it takes to sort the sausages out. The best batter is done by volume, you don’t need a set of scales, a measuring jug will do (or even a mug, but a measuring jug has marks on it to make this easier). First, break your eggs into whatever you're measuring your ingredients with. Note the volume and then put into another bowl. Measure out your milk to the same point and then pour into the eggs. Then the same with the flour. It is a bit more difficult with the flour, I spoon it into the jug and shake to level out the flour. This can then join the milk and eggs. The reason I do the eggs first is because eggs are a fixed volume of fluid: you could measure 100ml of milk, but you may have to use a bit of an egg to get the same volume and that could be wasteful.

Eggs

Milk

Flour

Give the batter a good whisk (remember to get into the corners to get all the flour) and add some herbs. I used a small handful of fresh chopped sage out of the garden because I’m lucky enough to have it. The Mark guy from the radio show used thyme, but I don’t think it’s got a strong enough flavour which is why I picked sage.  I don’t think the herb choice really matters  too much; if you were having lamb sausages you could stick mint in the batter, or put in a mix if you have a variety of dried herbs in the cupboard, and if you don’t just add some salt and pepper (do this anyway, in fact, herbs or not).

I have a magic whisk.

Sage. It smells like sausages.

Put the batter to one side. Turn on the oven (I have mine about 180C fan) and get out the pan you plan to use. I choose quite a large one to give all the sausages room to cook and get the batter around them. Splash a bit of sunflower/vegetable oil in the bottom of the dish and add the sausages. Prick the sausages to let out fat so they don’t explode. Stick in the oven. By the way, I'm cooking six sausages, but two were used the next day for sandwiches.

This is the time to prep potatoes for mash, and veg, so that when the sausages are ready for batter, I can put the potatoes on to cook too.

Lots of fat. Take that, "Mark".

After 15/20 minutes, the sausages should be brown on top. Work quickly, turn the sausages over and pour the batter around them (maybe give it a quick whisk to make sure you’ve got no lumps).  After another 15/20 minutes you should have a batter that’s cooked and risen around the edges, giving everyone a bit of crunch and a bit of soft, like a Yorkshire pudding cross-section.

Having been waiting all week to have the time to make this, I may have gone a bit over board when dishing up, and made it a bit more special with mushroom and onion gravy (fry mushrooms and onions in a pan and add your normal amount of gravy granules mixed in double the amount of water when cooked. It will thicken up.)

So there you go. TV Chefs take note.

In my last post I talked about how bummed out I’d been and feeling like the world was piling on top of me. Well, the knitting project I wanted to do is finished (and I even made gloves to match the hat), the plants I wanted to move are all in pots (although a tornado seems to have gone through the garden and my gooseberry bush has disappeared). I’m even looking forward having (drunkenly) ordered some seeds and started off some more wine.  It’s been a very productive month.

RaaRaa likes his hat.