Dinner for 3

You don’t always have to be in the same place to have dinner with some mates. Today was a Skype dinner with the 2 friends in the UK. They had their dinner while I scoffed lunch 6 time zones in their past.

On the menu for me was toad-in-the-hole, mashed potato with mixed veg and gravy and a glass or 3 of Merlot.

In hindsight it’s hilarious that I actually spent money on Yorkshire pudding mix in a box when I lived in England considering there’s really nothing complicated about making it from scratch.

For those who aren’t familiar with English food, toad-in-the-hole is simply sausages cooked in puffy batter. You can make one big one or individual ones in a muffin pan, which is the option I went with today.

To make 12 individual toads, you’ll need:

24 cocktail sausages, browned off in a bit of oil

150 ml plain flour

1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder *optional

150 ml milk

3 beaten eggs

Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450F (220C).

Brown off the cocktail sausages by putting 2 sausages into each muffin cup and drizzling with a bit of oil. Put them into the oven for about 15 mins, turning the sausages over about halfway.

While they are browning off, put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, making a well in the middle for the eggs.

Mix the eggs in well, then slowly start adding in the milk, mixing well between additions. The batter is a bit runny so don’t panic.

Take the sausages out of the oven once they are browned and turn the oven down to 400F (200C). Pour the batter into the hot muffin pans *for the love of God, don’t burn yourself!* to about 2/3 full, covering the sausages – see below:

In the oven they go for 15 minutes. The muffin pan needs to be hot when you pour the batter in or they won’t rise properly and will end up a tad doughy. Cold batter, hot pan – those are the rules.

While they’re busy doing their thing, whip up some mashed potato and steam up some mixed veg. I mixed a teaspoon of mustard powder into the mashed potato and it was delicious!

Once the toadies come out of the oven, plate them up immediately, slather on some gravy and grub’s up!

It’s a pity people don’t cook much anymore. Life got too convenient I suppose. There’s surprising pleasure sitting down to a meal with people you care about, even if they are a million miles away, noshing on some good simple food. This really needs to happen more often.