Toad in the Hole

“Are you cooking the Toad or am I?” Ed asks.

“How about we cook it together” Says I.

I wander off and when I return Ed is already slicing onions for the gravy and browning the sausages in a pan.

“Oh” I say forlornly “I thought we were cooking dinner together”

“Well, that usually means I do the cooking and you stand there drinking wine.”

How rude.

Having realised that I’ve been rumbled we agree that I will make the batter, maybe take a photo and he will do the rest. That means I can sit in the kitchen and write this for you. I’m still in my dressing gown anyway from the hot bath that I felt I needed to warm my bones.

It’s been a miserable damp day and we have spent a large proportion of it driving around Derbyshire to take George to cricket practice and fetch him back again. The bizarrely busy Sunday traffic seemed to hamper our journey at every turn so we have been on a magical mystery tour of Derbyshire passing each of the roughest areas in turn. I was glad to get home.

There is already a cracking log fire burning in the living room but I’m chatting to Ed and noting down quantities as the batter puffs up around the sausages. I want to wait around so that I can photograph it as it comes out of the oven – before it deflates and gets smothered in gravy.

The boy is not far away, but he is attached to his iPad viewing a never-ending stream of videos of other people playing Minecraft. I am yet to understand this weird occupation of watching other people shout, build things then knock them down again.

The dog (Ernie) is following everyone around, hoping against hope that they might drop some sort of snack. He is on snack-down smack-down due to his ever-increasing weight. In my eyes he still looks lithe and lovely, but he is truthfully weighty as dark matter with its own gravitational pull.

It’s not his fault. He’s just big-boned. He also very much like crisps and sausages. Who says dogs are like their owners? We like good sausages very much too. We eat them as they are or in a car…in casserole or in a hole.

This is how we make toad in the hole. For those not of a British persuasion Toad in the Hole is just sausages, cooked in Yorkshire pudding batter. George loves it and requested it this weekend instead of a Sunday roast.

We eat it with red onion gravy and lots of green vegetables to counteract the lard.

Ernie might be allowed but half a sausage – as a Sunday treat.

Things{we}make Toad in the Hole

Some tasty sausages

2 Large Eggs
175g Plain Flour
150ml Milk & 150ml Water
1 Teaspoon of grainy mustard
1-2 Tablespoons of Lard (about 50g)
Salt & Pepper

Fry the sausages until nice and brown all over.
Put the flour in a large bowl with a good grind of salt & pepper.
Whisk the eggs into the flour, then gradually whisk in the water/milk and then the mustard.
Leave to rest while you finish browning the sausages and preheat the oven to 200°c.
Put the lard in a deepish baking tray.*
Preheat the lardy tin in the oven until smoking hot.
Pour the hot batter into the tray, plop in the sausages and bake until puffed up and golden.
This should take about half an hour.

*I used the Silverwood 10″x8″x1.5″ tin and it was miraculous. The pudding didn’t stick one bit.