Summery Sausage Salad

We heard from Sainsbury's that their Taste the Difference sausages are now all gluten free and were asked if we'd like to try some.  Of course, we said YES, please!  

Having gone into store, it was easy to see the great new packaging for the TTD sausages and made a selection of the ones Sous Chef J will eat (thin ones... aka chipolatas or cocktail sausages).

As it was a sunny weekend, we decided an 'all-in-one' sausage salad dish would be a good meal to create. Pairing the sausages with some freshly cooked charlotte potatoes, a few salad onions and a homemade dressing/sauce, we thought we'd have a simple and tasty meal for eating outdoors.

The dressing was made using store cupboard standbys -

2 Tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 Tablespoons cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon grainy mustard
1 Tablespoon honey

All this was mixed together and half of the sliced salad onions were added.

The sausages were separated and added to a hot frying pan to cook through.

Adding half of the sauce to the sausages and cooking to make it sticky...

.... whilst the sausages were cooking, the charlotte potatoes were boiled.  Once cooked and drained, the potatoes were put in a bowl and the remainder of the sauce was poured over and stirred through.

Finally, the sausage and sauce mix was added to the potatoes, stirred and the remaining onions were sprinkled over.

The sausage salad was delicious!

We'll definitely be adding TTD Sausages to our shopping list... and particularly liked the "snap and keep" packaging - allowing half the sausages to be saved for another day/frozen.

DISCLOSURE - we were sent a gift card by Sainsbury's to be used for buying sausages and ingredients for this recipe.  The recipe and opinions in this post are our own.

Simple Sausage Pasta

We were chatting on twitter about our favourite gluten free sausages last week - Sous Chef J has long been a fan of the Good Little Company's teeny weeny sausages but we haven't been able to find them in the supermarket for a while.  The final batch from the freezer had been used up so we entered into a conversation with the manufacturers and they reassured us the teeny weenies will be in stores again soon.   Sous Chef J likes the teeny weeny sausages as they are easier for him to eat and have a soft consistency.  He rates them as "the best gluten free sausages to eat." 

In the meantime, we were sent a parcel of the current range of sausages they have on sale which was very kind and much appreciated.  It contained  great BIG sausages and good little sausages (chipolatas).  The covering letter was addressed to J and explained about how the company donates meals through Christian aids food security projects. 

Now came the challenge to find a suitable recipe to tempt Sous Chef J to try the 'larger' sausages... I decided to use my old standby technique of 'rebranding' and thought a sausage used as a meat ball in a tomato sauce with pasta would be a good idea.

To make the re-brand into a tomato and meatball pasta sauce, we used:-

Sausages - cut into 2cm chunks (meatballs)
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
one small salad onion or a crushed clove of garlic
one Tablespoon tomato puree

The chopped onion and tomato puree were sauteed in a skillet for a few minutes.

Then we added the sausage meatball chunks and left them to cook for a little under 10 minutes until they were lightly cooked throughout.

At this point the tinned tomatoes were added and the lid was placed on the pan to allow the mix to boil.

Once boiling, the heat was reduced and the sausage mix was allowed to simmer whilst we cooked the pasta.  We chose to have Dove's Farm Gluten Free penne with our tomato sausage meatballs.

The tomato and sausage sauce could easily be cooked in a slow cooker - ready to use after a day out.  Just add all ingredients to the crock pot and cook on low for a few hours.

Toad in the Hole

It was a lovely surprise to arrive home from holiday last week and find a pack of Isabel's Yorkshire Pudding Mix waiting for us in the post.  We had been lucky enough to test some of the mix before it had been finally packaged and prepared for sale.  So, we decided that a good dish to use it in would be Toad in the Hole. 

With this in mind, we bought some Gluten Free sausages from the Good Little Company and were ready to make the most of the oven space when we were baking Banana Bread on Friday.
The ingredients in Isabel's Yorkshire Pudding Mix are naturally gluten free...

.... and the instructions are clear and easy to follow.

So, we got 2 eggs and 320ml of milk and started to prepare the batter.

We whisked the eggs into the milk.

Then added the milk/egg mix to the flour and whisked it together.

Then, the batter was divided between two baking trays which had been placed in the pre-heated oven.  Instead of the oil suggested on the packet, we used a little beef dripping in the bottom of each tray.
One tray had just batter added and the other had some pre-cooked sausages added to the mix.  Both trays were then placed in the pre-heated oven (180ºC fan) and cooked for 25 minutes.

After 25 minutes in the oven, this was the result.  Sous Chef J was most impressed with the 'plain' Yorkshire pudding as it had turned into a mountainous pud.

The Toad in the Hole was cooked well throughout although the sausages were rather 'well done'!

Sous Chef J didn't complain though, and his plate of tasty mouthfuls was demolished in record time.

Thanks, once more, to Isabel for yet another lovely Gluten Free mix that makes cooking simple and tasty.

Check out our earlier post about cooking with Isabel's Pizza Base mix here