Monday 3 July 2017

Toads and tadpoles

I'm a great fan of traditional British food.  It's good stuff, usually pretty economical.  The ingredients are easily available.  It carries me back to childhood.  And so many dishes have such wonderful names!

Bubble and squeak.  Spotted dick.  Star gazey pie.  Roly poly pudd'n.  And toad in the hole.

As a name Toad in the Hole does not sound very appetising.  Who would want to eat a warty amphibian?  All true Brits know that it is a delicious combination of sausages and batter!

Until very recently I hadn't cooked it for many years but it's had a renaissance here at Frugal Follies.  I've given it a bit of a twist in that I've started to put vegetables in as well as sausages.  Hence it is now toad and tadpoles.

This recipe serves one very greedy person.  

40g plain flour
1 egg
60ml milk

Beat these three together to create a batter then leave it in the fridge for an hour.

Heat the oven to 190C, Gas mark 5.  Put a glug of oil in a small ovenproof dish and heat in the oven.

Put two cooked sausages and a selection of vegetables into the hot oil.  So far I have tried onions, broccoli, carrots, green beans, peppers, and all have been good.  Pour the batter over and return dish to oven.  Cook for about twenty minutes and don't open the oven door for at least fifteen minutes.

Serve with gravy

8 comments:

  1. What a great idea to add veg etc I'm going to have to Google Star gazey Pie!

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    1. It seems a better use of fuel, especially when I'm cooking for just one.

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  2. Wow! Sounds easy to make. Healthy to eat.

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  3. I made bubble and squeak once! I loved it!

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  4. Would you be surprised to find that toad in the hole is something different here? What I know as toad in the hole is a slice of bread with the center cut out, imagine using a smallish biscuit cutter (shoot you call biscuits something else... need to google it... darn it, google says that you don't eat much anything like our biscuits, so the closest thing would be a scone but our scones do not look like our biscuits. What you call a biscuit by the way we call a cookie) Okay, so cut a hole out of the center of a slice of bread, place it into a buttered fry pan and crack an egg into the hole. Once it's cooked you have "toad in the hole."

    We also do not have any version of "Bubble and squeak. Spotted dick. Star gazey pie. [or] Roly poly pudd'n." But I sure enjoyed bubble and squeak when I made it.

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    1. We'd just call the cutter a pastry cutter.

      And no. I didn't know about your toad in the hole. We have the dish you describe here (usually for children) but we don't have a name for it. Thanks for that one!

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  5. Mr FD likes "Corned dog in the Hole" - basically cooked onions and mushrooms, plus chunks of corned beef, covered in batter. We always have it with a tin of beans. Here in France you don't see corned beef very often, but as I found a tin recently, we have Corned Dog in the Hole on this week's menu.

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