Historically, toad-in-the-hole is an ancient British dish. My Dutch wife had never even heard of it and, I imagine the French would turn up their noses at the very thought of toad-in-the-hole (despite relishing frogs' legs) because it is connected with that dreadful reputation of culinary ineptitude in Britain that was once the butt of international jokes.
Toad-in-the-hole was a favourite of my youth.Now, because of a recently established tradition, it has become the expected main course when a friend is invited to dine with us each year on Christmas Eve.
The snag is that trying many varieties of sausage every year and not being as I really wanted it to be, it is only recently that this hearty dish of sausages in batter has become a total success.
This success is partly due to a piece in one of those coloured newspaper supplements where the cook/author had made a simple dish of it far too elaborately and time-consuming in preparation. But it had a most useful tip concerning the batter.
The search for a successful batter and how to cook it is not the advice once given me by a Yorkshireman, who said that it should be put together just before the dish was to go in the oven. That it should rest beforehand, learned from this article, would seem now to be essential. So make the batter at least an hour or more before cooking the toad. Let's deal with the batter first, based on my own pancake mix. The volumes are enough for two people, with possibly some batter not consumed, which can be heated up and eaten later.
In a bowl put three and a half dessert spoonfuls of plain flour, a pinch of turmeric (for colour only and not at all essential) and a little salt. Whisk it together. Make a well in the middle and into it break two eggs. Break up the eggs with the whisk and slowly add a quarter of a pint of milk as you whisk it. The batter will be formed. Make sure that you beat out all the lumps. Put this batter aside to rest and, should you pass by it, give it another whisk for good measure.
Now for the sausages. Before it became fashionable for sausages to be filled mostly with meat and be rather solid, the old British banger was harder to find, blander, and made of finely minced pork, plenty of fat (lard) a few spices and a lot of rusk. I buy a packet of Richmond 12 Thick Pork Sausages. These complement the batter as the batter complements the sausages.
Now you will need a baking tin in which to put plenty of oil (I use groundnut) and, if wanted and available, some lard (make sure that the sides of the tin are coated as well). Add and arrange the sausages (two a person) on the oil. To cook the dish you will need to remember only two numbers
- 20 and 200.
That's it. That's all.
