bustrouffi

Short and sweet for a Saturday afternoon.... Starting to get a bit annoyed about all the sausages in my freezer but after a big gin and tonic at the pub, certainly the idea of sausages wrapped in pastry seemed really quite nice.

Bog standard pastry (Bells from Tesco's), turmeric trick and oil on top for goldening (if you don't know, you can use turmeric to mimic the golden browning that comes from using an egg wash on pastry. It's not quite as good for pure visual but it's all right!).

As I was making this, I thought that chopped up mushrooms like from an en croute would be delicious... So that'll be happening at some point probably in the next couple of weeks.. how have sausage rolls en croute not already a thing?!

What's an en croute? Technically nothing because that's not actually a phrase for technical correctness. Something is en croute, you cannot have 'an en croute'.

It means 'in a crust' in French and the classic one is bouef en croute, i.e. beef in a crust.

You add pate (urgh ☹️) and chopped mushrooms and herbs as a layer on the pastry (which I think is called the douxelle?), put whatever protein or vegetables you want to make em croute, and then give it a lovely bake.

Smelt amazing when cut open.... Casing a little unnecessary and a little hard to not through. They didn't bloody explode though 💪

And here are the remade version 1 sausages as described yesterday...

I still don't have a non-stick frying pan, so experiments continue to be not fried....

This is about 15mins at 180° - I'd read that putting them in a hot oven can cause explosions quickly for obvious reasons (I.e. sudden steam production) so I thought I'd put them in at 180... They might have worked better if I put them in while it was heating up so they could heat up with it but I'm trying to produce something that works for you know your quintessential busy family or whatever, where you want to be able to just put them in the oven and not think about it too much!

They were looking great at 10 minutes, disappointed that they blew at 15. I have not been pricking holes in them because I strongly suspect this purely just makes it easier for them to blow.

Texture was not that satisfying where they are still fundamentally floppy in themselves... The rusk did help soak up the moisture but getting further away from a toothsome bite.

The 'snap' of the casing - which I have since found out is a key corporate food design sausage concept 😋 - was all right but a bit floppy.

I ate them dipped in ketchup and overall very delicious, even if mouthfeel isn'tquite right.

After the excitement of days one and two I decided I needed to take a break over the weekend and mull over this moisture issue...

I got out some of day one sausages from the freezer to use them up and some day two sausages to try them..... And looking at them side by side, the way forward became clear

Defrost and then remake day one.... They're just too wet to be taken seriously. So here they are remade! I had a little bit of olive and tomato left over from a salad so I chopped that up and added them and then I mixed all the flavours together.... We had a bit of spring onion and apple, paprika and garlic, and the plain rusk mix Lincolnshire flavouring and here they are all together.

More rusk added to capture the water but not lose it - I did try to strain it with a bag in a way but so little was coming out that it sort of seemed a false economy of effort. So instead I chucked in more rusk to soak the water up rather than trying to remove the water.

Texture is looking excellent.... might try and make a casserole!

Okay so Day 2 was indeed too dry.

They were not bready though, and just a bit rubbery.

Picture is a comparison of Day 1 and Day 2 for lunch....

Day 1 are on the right and you can see they've done their sloppy bursting thing....

I noticed where they had been defrosted for about 18 hours, one of them had started to break open and this reminded me that, unsurprisingly, sitting in moisture does indeed damage the casings

Day 2 is on the left as a trial. It did not burst but it shrank slightly which left the casing slightly wrinkled which was just gross and funny. As mentioned, just chewy...still tasted good, still wasn't bad in any sense but a bit chewy

Looking forward to making spaghetti and meatballs tonight with the day 2 mix...I'm not sure if it will absorb sauce or not after 24 hrs of the gluten sitting in a fairly dry but oily mixture...let's find out! I suspect they won't fall apart though which will be great.

Which has just made me think about agar....

Day 3 is clearly something in the middle - I'm now regretting following my dreams like I was chasing a butterfly because I don't really know ratios to start narrowing down what's needed. Time to at least weigh things.

And try some agar.

I'm pleased to report that the ones I made before do freeze okay and don't do something weird and clump or anything like that - they defrosted fine and are still a weird sloppy non-sausage that explodes because it's too much water in it.

But the exciting news is that if they freeze, we don't have to be careful so I can indulge myself and follow the itch!

Pretty much on a whim to give myself something to do between work, I decided to go again and make something drier!

Today's mix is yellow split peas, crushed end of the bag of tofu sheets, cannellini beans, mushrooms and gluten.

The mushrooms were dry fried under a heavy weight to get as much water as possible although I did put the mushroom water back in to the bowl of everything else where I was letting things at the frozen defrost onto the tofu sheets to rehydrate them.

I banged a good bit of the Lincolnshire flavour industrial rusk mix I bought from the butchers as well (so it's just rusk, i.e wheat, and spices) for flavour texture and soaking up more water.

Extra flavouring was some leek, garlic, salt, tomato paste, and some ground black cardamom where I ground the pods as well as the seeds because they're the part that get smoked, and my generic umami mix which is mostly soy sauce, let's be honest.

This got left to defrost where appropriate, then I blended the mixture. I started off by putting it in a bag to twist and squeeze and get some of the liquid out.... Very quickly moved to put it on the floor and standing on it to hurry up the process

Then banged in some gluten flour to stick it together!

It looks and smells amazing but I'm still learning about how gluten hardening does make hand machining it a little exhausting 😁 banged quite a lot of oil in as well for taste but also lubricating the process.

Not cooked yet and giving them a couple of hours... After 8 sausages, I decided to just make meatballs out the rest which I really am looking forward to using later

My predictions for this batch is that it's going to be a little dry and maybe skating towards bready - often a danger with gluten in my experience but then I usually hand make it and not buy the flour pre-made - we'll see!

What I definitely think won't happen this time around is any explosion ❤️

Hi everyone!

Been really excited to be able to get to actually have a go at making homemade sausages!

These have been a glorious protein delight of all sorts...

The end of a bag of TVP, a big handful of tofu sheets that I'd broken, yellow split peas and cannellini beans pureed, a load of mushrooms, and then gluten flour to stick it all together.

TVP tofu and mushrooms were soaked in what is mainly a soy sauce mixture that's designed to do umami.

And then I bought some commercial flavouring that was going cheap where I got the casings from, so bit of added rusk and some spices!

I had an amazingly fun time making these and I don't know everyone's going on about about it being difficult and messy - it was really easy!

Cooking went okay ish - they did split so it's definitely too wet but the flavouring was excellent and they ended up being a bit like nduja,all delicious and spreadable.

I accidentally bought 10 sticks of casings (apparently it was 2x5 not 2) so I'm really looking forward to playing around with the recipe