Everyday meals - comfort food

Some of you might think that it’s only posh gourmet food that we eat in the Willis household. You’d be wrong though. Although we do like to eat well, many of the everyday meals never feature on our blogs – which is why I thought I would give a bit of visibility to a couple of meals I recently made, which don’t really warrant a blogpost of their own, or a recipe.

First this:

This is what we Brits call “Toad in the Hole”, but this one is actually its French cousin ”Crapaud dans le Trou”, because it is made with Toulouse sausages, which contain a lot of garlic. The batter is the same as that used in Yorkshire Pudding. Since this is the first time I had made this dish I foolishly thought it would be much the same as making Yorkshire Puddings, but it took MUCH longer to cook, and to be honest, the centre was still a bit under-done by the time the edges began to go very dark. I think it would have been wiser to cook it longer at a lower temperature, or perhaps use a bigger pan so that the batter is thinner. Hey Ho, this is the sort of thing that you learn through experience!

To add yet more garlickyness to the dish, I served it with new potatoes slathered in home-made Wild Garlic Pesto. I didn’t take a photo of the salad I served alongside the hot food. Guess what was in the salad dressing? Garlic? No, it was shallots this time – and mustard, as well as the usual oil and vinegar.

I loved it, but Jane found the pesto a bit overpowering. The Wild Garlic in the pesto is raw, and I think it would be a bit milder when cooked.

This is very much the sort of thing I like, and I cook in this style very frequently. The meat is cooked long and slow (about 3 hours at 150C), so that it goes very tender. I always make sure there is plenty of gravy. In this case it is enhanced with the addition of onions, mushrooms and carrots, as well as fresh Thyme.