Sunday 9 May 2010

Sausages after a long weekend of house stuff...

Kicking back with a pint of Old Speckled Hen, Pink Floyd on the stereo, waiting for something wonderful to come out of the oven...

Been a fairly busy weekend. We recently had the Gas Networks guys out to sort out a legacy of this house once being flats, or maybe bedsits. We had a live gas supply going up into the 1st floor with no means of isolating it, plus two really unpretty gas pipes going up the walls.

When you take a step back and think about it, not too safe really, as well as being a bit unsightly. So the gas guys dug up the road and renewed the live supply, cutting off the old upstairs one. Problem solved. Apart from getting rid of thick gas piping from our top floor...

Much sweat and hacksaw blades later, it is Done. No more pipes. Felt like a bomb disposal expert a little bit though - cutting through pipes that once contained gas, you do get a bit of a gas smell, and that all makes you think .. did they miss another live connection somewhere....

But all well, and now have lots of scrap metal that I'm hoping I might get a fiver for at one of South London's finest scrap merchants. We'll see...

So getting back to cooking, tonight is a little something the most excellent Nigel Slater proposes in Tender Part One. (I know I go on about this book a bit, but it's so good...)

For this, chop up 4 onions quite roughly and soften them in the same pan you're going to put in the oven later. Oh, and preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Meanwhile, chop up some parsnips (about 500g) into 'wine cork sized' pieces (Nigel's words, not mine - loving that!). Toss those in with the onions and let all that colour for a bit. Then chop up 6 sausages (good ones from the butcher, low in fat) into thirds, take the parsnip and onion out of the pan and brown the sausages. Once that's done, put the onion and parsnips back in, along with a few sprigs of thyme and 500ml of chicken stock. Let it boil then put in the oven for about 35-40 minutes.



I'm just waiting for all that to happen now - the photo was before it went in the oven, but looks promising I think.

Wonder if it's time for another pint of Speckled Hen....