[FHCB] Mouse's Sausage Fest

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs, whisked
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
115g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder (optional)
sausages

Full Recipe and nutrional information can be found here (originally from "Cook with Jamie")

2 heaped teaspoons fennel seeds
2 dried red chillies, crumbled
olive oil
400 g quality coarse Italian or Cumberland sausages
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 small wineglass white wine
zest and juice of lemon
320 g good-quality fusilli or penne
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
1 small handful Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, plus extra for serving
1 small bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped

Bacon (I used thin cut streaky rashes)
Sausages (I used cocktail sausages)
Cheese (I used cheddar)
Chocolate

1. Wrap the sausages in bacon and fry
2. Melt cheese and pour into dipping tray
3. Melt chocolate and pour into a seperate dipping tray
4. Serve

I chose to have sausages as the theme, because yeah – reduced food <3 (poor students and all that). I love meaty sausages, rather than the spongy ones found in Denmark or in hotdogs and meat is always tasty! I saw the sausages reduced to 59 pence and quickly bought them and put them in the freezer, defrosting 2 of the 3 packs for this meal :3

When I think of starters, I always think of finger-food. Maybe its because bruschetta is my favourite starter. Maybe its because thats the only type of starter I had while growing up, as I have 3 younger siblings, so food had to be child-proof. Whatever the reason, I wanted to make my starter a finger food. My mother makes some really nice buns and puts a bit of chocolate in them and they tasty really nice, so I thought I might try and recreate this with sausage instead. So I took a random bun recipe off the internet and made the dough. This turned out to be a mistake as the recipe kinda sucked and the dough was way too wet. But I thought that I might as well try it out, so I went ahead with it before attempting to fix the dough by adding more flour. When in the oven, the dough pooled a bit at the bottom, which I thought looked quite nice and unique, so I went with it. I made 2 small batches, one where the sausages were uncooked and one where the sausages were pan-fried before hand, to see if that made any difference, and it didnt really. Both had nicely cooked meat at the end, so it didnt really matter. I tried to serve it up nicely, attempting to do a ying-yang sign with ketchup and bbq sauce as something to dip the starter in. No idea what the name of the dish should be though, any ideas?

I thought quite a bit about what sausage dish I should make. I was originally going to slice it and make some fried rice or stir-fry with it. Then I was going to make a sausage casserole. Then a sausage stew. Then toad in a hole. And so on and so forth. But then I eventually decided on a recipe for "Proper Blokes' Sausage Fusilli" (from a Jamie Oliver cook book), which I have been meaning to try for some time now and it helped that fusilli and parmesan were set down to half price in my local supermarket. Its a simple dish, but also hearty and "blokey" and those are the kind of meals I like. I adapted the recipe slightly by leaving out some of the spices as the herbiness from the Lincolnshire sausages more than made up for that and added a bit more sausage to bring forth the sausage flavour more, because you cant be stingy with the main ingredient! I served the meal with a glass of white wine (I did consider a beer, but opted to go with the wine I used as an ingredient instead) and I dont know much about wines and what goes well with what, but the wine's fruity flavour seemed to go quite well with the meal.

The idea behind the desert, was after the pasta was to go back to a finger-food desert. The starter was a hands-on finger-food which worked fine as it was a starter, but I felt the need to make my desert dish a little more fancy. I decided to make it simple as well though, so I only chose a few ingredients. If there are 3 things I love in this world, then they are bacon, chocolate and cheese, so I thought, hey - why not combine these together (well, not the chocolate and cheese though) and so I settled on wrapping the sausages in bacon and dipping them in either chocolate or cheese, because what is life without excess :P The herby Lincolnshire sausage went quite well with the cheese, while the more meaty Cumberland went better with the choc. Apparently bacon-wrapped sausages are called pigs in blankets and is traditionally served with the British Christmas dinner (though probably without the choco/cheese dips), so its also local and seasonal!