Correspondent photo by Eric Stanway Bangers and Mash makes a hearty winter meal.
Bangers and Mash
Correspondent photo by Eric Stanway Bangers and Mash makes a hearty winter meal.
Sausages, sausages, sausages. Consider poor Odysseus, thousands of miles from home, subsisting for weeks on end on meager ship’s rations, tossing in his sleep, with only one thought on his mind:
Rolling from side to side
As a cook turns a sausage, big with blood
And fat, at a scorching blaze, without a pause,
To broil it quick.
Yep, the Greeks were certainly keen on their sausages. Quite apart from this, there is the comedy “The Orya” (The Sausage) by the playwright Epicharmus, who was considered by Plato to be to comedy what Homer was to tragedy.
Indeed, this frugal way of dealing with offal was popular all over the ancient world. The Roman epicurean Apicius writes of them glowingly in “De re coquinaria,” his cookbook of the first century A.D. But to find the origin of the dish, we must go back to the Sumerians, who lived in what is now Iraq, some 3,000 years ago. Sumerian is the oldest known written language in human history, widely spoken throughout Mesopotamia until the time of Christ, when it died out.
But as the word died out, the sausage continued to thrive. As previously mentioned, the Romans were particularly fond of them, as they mixed pork with pine nuts, cumin seed, bay leaves and black pepper before stuffing them into cleaned intestines. At about 400, they brought this tradition to Britain, where it remains popular to this day – with a few recipe revisions. It is from the Romans that the English word sausage originates. The Romans called them “salsicia,” meaning salted meat. The North French converted this into “saussiche,” and the English “sausage.”
There are, of course, numerous kinds of sausage thriving all over the world. The German “wurst” has dozens of variants of its own; diners in warmer climates enjoyed what is now colloquially known as “summer sausage,” meant to be eaten cold and requiring no refrigeration; the French have their “Boudin,” or blood sausage; and Eastern Europe has the “kishka,” popular with Poles and Ashkenazi Jews and popularized in the old folk song, “Who Stole the Kishka?”
Of course, as with most dishes, things didn’t always go smoothly. The Christian Emperor Constantinus banned the consumption of sausage in Rome in 320, feeling that they were too closely tied to pagan festivals, and the Byzantine Emperor Leo V treated them with similar disdain in his ninth century edict that sausage makers “be severely scourged, smoothly shaved and banished from our realm forever.”
None of it did any good. The sausage continued to thrive throughout the world. Contenders for the largest consumers of links are the Germans and the English, with the Brits alone plonking down 500 million pounds a year on them, eating a good 10 pounds apiece. The British sausages, colloquially known as “bangers,” have a considerable amount of bread in them, resulting in a lighter and milder product. The word itself seems to date back to World War II, when the excessive amount of water in the sausage would make it explode. Over the years, sausages have become a national institution over there, even celebrated during the British Sausage Appreciation Week, which takes place in the first week of November.
The dish we are concerned with here is an old pub favorite known as Bangers and Mash, which pretty much speaks for itself. I’m going to assume we all know how to make mashed potatoes, so I’ll skip that bit. Bangers, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult. You can’t buy them in a store in this country, so it’s time to dust off the old sausage maker and get stuck in.
BANGERS AND MASH
Makes 6 servings.
FOR THE SEASONING:
5 teaspoon ground white pepper
21⁄2 teaspoons mace
21⁄4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
1⁄2 teaspoon nutmeg
FOR THE SAUSAGE:
21⁄2 pounds boneless lean pork shoulder or loin cut in cubes
1 pound fresh pork fat in cubes
11⁄2 cups dry bread crumbs
11⁄4 cups chicken broth
31⁄2 teaspoons banger seasoning
FOR THE GRAVY:
1 (28-ounce) can whole plum tomatoes, undrained
1 large onion
1 green pepper
1 package dry onion soup mix
Mashed potatoes
Grind pork and fat together using plate of meat grinder. Add banger seasoning and mix well. Grind again. Stuff mixture into casings and tie in 4-5 inch lengths.
Place 12 of the sausages in a large saucepan with a little oil. (You can bag and freeze the rest for later use.)
Brown thoroughly. Chop up the onion and the pepper, and place in the pan; saute until tender. Add the can of tomatoes and mash with the edge of a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to a simmer, and cook, covered, for about half an hour.
Place a serving of mashed potatoes on a warm plate. Put two of the bangers on top, and pour the onion gravy around. Serve immediately.
Eric Stanway can be reached at Eric.Stanway@yahoo.com or www.Eric Stanway.com
