Though I finished this challenge over a week ago it’s only now that I’ve gotten a moment to finally put it all in a post. So many things going on, but the best part is….
I WON!!! My hedgehogs from “A Tale of Two Hedgehogs” won the competition. I’m so excited about this! I was just excited about the challenge and was so excited when I found out. And even more exciting was the prize…
A wonderful tote, which has been put to great use carrying more cookbooks, any edition of the magazine (which this particular one is issue #4) and a lovely handwritten post card. It was such a joy to receive and share with everyone!
I can’t wait to do their next challenge! But, meanwhile, I have a Historical Food Fortnightly challenge to finish. This particular challenge is all about balance (in theme with the autumnal equinox, balance of light and dark, ect. ect. ect…). So I decided to pick a receipt that had a balance of sweet and savory, as well as two prominent fall ingredients that work VERY well together, sausage and apple!
Fried Sausages
“Take half a pound of sausages, add six apples, slice four about as thick as a crown, cut the other two in quarters, fry them with the sausages of a fine light brown, lay the sausages in the middle of the dish, and the apples round. Garnish with the quartered apples.”
Glasse, Hannah The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747
Once reading through this receipt it may seem extremely simple in its approach…
… and it is! But leave it to me to mess something up…
So I started out with six apples which were on the sweeter side (to really bring out the sweet/savory contrast). These are Honey Crisps. But, being in New England, I am lucky to have access to many different apple types and could have also used Ambrosia, Gala, Golden Delicious or even Pink Lady. But I happen to prefer Honey Crisp because it’s got a slight tart flavor too.
So I took my handy dandy nifty apple corerer and decored(?) the apples. This step isn’t discussed in the receipt, but I personally don’t want seeds or stems in my food, so out go the cores! I did leave the skin though, mainly for the structural integrity of the apples.
Now the receipt says that four of these apples need to be sliced “about as thick as a crown“. Ok. Ummmm…. how thick?
So, after doing about an hour’s worth of research on the exact thickness of a mid-18th century English Crown, I gave up and decided to cut them in thick, even slices. I’ll let you know whether I was right or wrong with the thickness when I actually get that information.
And the other two I quartered. That was much simpler!
Then I put them all in a bowl and set them aside.
I would usually, at this point, put some lemon juice over them to keep them from oxidizing and browning too much. But, since the receipt doesn’t say to do it, I decided against it. But, as you can see above, they were already starting to brown a bit.
Now we get to the part where I make a mistake! On a receipt that literally has two ingredients…. two. *Sigh*
So, in shopping for this particular receipt, I for some reason thought it needed sausage meat rather than regular sausages. I could probably come up with a million excuses why I did it that way, but honestly, I completely blanked on what this particular receipt was supposed to be like and just grabbed the sweet Italian sausage meat and went to the register.
Hence why the picture above is a little over half a pound of sausage meat rather than half a pound of sausages… oy vey!
But, being the frugal Yankee that I am, I couldn’t let my mistake go to waste, so I took the sausage meat and molded them into sausage shapes, ready to fry in the pan!
Then I added the apples! And realized very quickly that I probably needed a bigger pan (though this was the biggest one I had on hand.)
Then, over a medium heat, I put the sausages and apples on the stove to cook for about 15- 20 minutes (mainly till the sausage meat was browned and cooked through). I also covered the pan about halfway through it with the thought that this would help to cook things before they burned. And I think it helped the process immensely!
And here it is! Fried Sausages!
The sausage meat was nice and browned and cooked through. Most of the apples held their shape (a few cooked down to a sauce, which was excellent). And the smell was incredibly delightful! Though I am very partial to the scent of cooked apples myself.
And here I am plating to Hannah Glasse’s instructions, sort of.
I think I need a bigger plate… (there seems to be a theme here)…
So, how did it taste?
Very good! But honestly how can you go wrong with the taste of sausage with cooked apples.
The apple had enough bite that you could eat it with the sausage, though some of the apples cooked down to a pulp making a lovely sauce for the sausage meat!
If I had to adjust it a bit (besides getting actual sausages) I would get sausages with a savory sage flavor rather than the sweet fennel flavor. Not to say it didn’t taste good, because it did, but I think that the sage would complement the apples even more.
But it is certainly a receipt that I will make again! And yes, with actual sausages this time!