Both of these sausage-based delights are great for a gathering, can be prepared in advance and go really, really well with ice-cold beers. God bless the sausage. Whether your team is winning, losing, embarrassing or delighting, everyone will consider you the Cristiano Ronaldo of half-time snacks if you bang either of these out. The prawn and sausage toasts can be made in advance and kept in the fridge with greaseproof paper between the slices, then you just need to fry them when you want them. Similarly with the hotdogs: prep everything in advance, then, when the whistle goes, boil the sausages, steam the buns and get stuck in.
Reuben(esque) hot dogs (pictured top)
I own a brilliant one, but Katz’s Deli in New York is surely everyone’s desert island sandwich shop. This hot dog is a little piece of heaven, and is eaten at my house quite often while we sit around reminiscing about Katz’s extraordinary sarnies. Your local Polish shop (or mine, at least) is a great place to get less industrial (sometimes even raw or old-smoked) hot dog-appropriate sausages – much better than you might get in the supermarket.
Prep 10 min
Cook 20 min
Makes 2
2 thumb-thick smoked sausages, such as kielbasa myśliwska or frankfurters
2 hot dog buns of your choice, split open lengthways
1 pinch caraway seeds
1 small pinch fine sea salt
60g sauerkraut (drained weight – if yours has lots of liquid, let it drain in a colander for 30 minutes first)
2 tbsp very finely chopped onion
For the pangrattato
4 tbsp olive oil
20g fresh sourdough breadcrumbs
For the Russian dressing
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 heaped tbsp coarsely grated or finely chopped gherkins, or sweet dill pickles
¼ tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp white-wine vinegar
3 good schploofs Tabasco
First, make the pangrattato. Put the olive oil in a small saucepan on a medium heat, fry the breadcrumbs for about five minutes, turning them often, until deep golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper.
Mix all the ingredients for the Russian dressing in a bowl, then taste and adjust as you see fit.
In a saucepan that is at least as wide as the sausages are long, bring 2½cm water to a boil. Throw in the sausages and boil for five minutes. If you have a metal colander, sieve or vegetable steamer basket, pop it on top of the hot dog pan while they’re boiling, throw in the buns and steam briefly until soft. (Skip this step if you can’t be bothered, but I regret it when I don’t.)
Put the caraway seeds and salt in a mortar and grind to a powder.
Lay a hot sausage in each bun’s crevice and cover it in Russian dressing. Roll the sausages over in the crevice, then add a little more sauce. Cover in kraut, sprinkle on the raw onion, then some caraway powder and, finally, the pangrattato. Bloody good, isn’t it?
Sausage and prawn toasts
My dear friend Lorcan Spiteri is a brilliant cook and a fantastic fryer of things. For me, at least, he single-handedly made prawn (shrimp) toast cool again by serving it as a starter at his old restaurant, Caravel, in London. This is his recipe, with sausagemeat blitzed in with the prawns, which adds a slightly denser, chewier and wonderful feel to the whole thing and surely elevates it to the realms of Greatest Unexpected Breakfast Dishes of All Time. Lorcan serves this with a chilli jam he makes – which is wonderful, but more work – so you could have yours with sweet chilli sauce, but for God’s sake, mix some extra vinegar into it, and don’t tell anyone. To be honest, the toast is so good, I’m not sure it really needs anything beyond a cold beer.
Prep 10 min
Chill 1 hr+
Cook 30 min
Serves 6 as a starter
400g raw peeled king prawns
200g sausagemeat, or sausages of your choice, skinned, at room temperature
2 tsp light or Japanese soy sauce
2 tsp fish sauce
2 tsp rice, malt or white-wine vinegar
3 large garlic cloves, peeled and grated or very finely chopped
20g fresh root ginger, peeled and grated or very finely chopped
1 red chilli (size of your choosing – I like a big one), stalk, pith and seeds discarded, flesh finely chopped
3 tbsp finely chopped coriander, stalks and all
5 tbsp black sesame seeds
5 tbsp white sesame seeds
6 extra-thick slices soft white bread (Hovis or Warburtons “Toastie” is perfect – if it’s too thin, the bread will go soggy)
400–500ml rapeseed or vegetable oil
Condiments of your choice, to serve (optional, but these are really good with Lao Gan Ma chilli crisp)
Ice-cold lagers, to serve (optional)
First, put the prawns between a few sheets of kitchen paper and gently press down to dry them. Be thorough – they need to be really dry.
Put the sausagemeat in a food processor with half the prawns, the soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, garlic and ginger, and blitz until completely smooth.
Chop the remaining prawns into small-ish chunks, add them to the prawn and sausage paste with the chilli and coriander, and stir until combined.
Mix the black and white sesame seeds on a large, flat plate.
Use a spatula to slather the prawn and pork mix on to the bread, edge to edge in an even layer, really pressing it on. Firmly press the slices paste-side down into the sesame seeds, so they completely cover everything and are really stuck on.
Refrigerate the slices seeded side up in a stack, with a small sheet of baking paper between each one, for at least an hour (if not two), to firm up.
Heat the oven to 70C (50C fan)/160F/gas ¼, or its lowest setting, and cover a baking sheet with kitchen paper. Heat the oil in your biggest frying pan to 180C – if you have a probe thermometer, this will be easy to gauge, but if you don’t, a small cube of bread should bubble and turn golden in about 20 seconds. Fry the slices seeded side down in batches for two and a half minutes, then flip them over (carefully) and repeat. Put the cooked slices on the paper-lined baking sheet in the warm oven while you fry the rest.
Cut in half (diagonally, of course), and serve with your chosen condiment, an ice-cold beer or nothing at all.
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These recipes are edited extracts from Cooking with Sausages: Delicious Things to Make with Everything from Chipolatas to Chorizo by Max Halley, published by DK at £16.99. To order a copy for £15.29, go to guardianbookshop.com
