Imperative Cooking: spouses
:400/LORL2 J1° 31„.
THIS week's column is addressed not to regular cooks but those husbands who rarely work in kitchens but who would help their 'busy' spouses at Christmass. Their wives have already been assailed with advice on how to manage the great day, how to plan the 'festive meal' eight weeks ahead with a long list of 'count-down' instructions, how to 'get through it all' without mishaps. The assumption on which all this rests is that Christmass cooking involves the mistress of the house in a vast amount of intellectually demanding and physically exhausting work. As it is the season of goodwill and hypocrisy, I shall pretend this is true. What then can a kind husband, possibly with co-operative chil- dren, do to help? The situation comedies always suggest that what today's mistress likes more than anything is a Perhaps you could make the Christmass breakfast? Something simple. Sausages.
So, first thing Monday off you go down to the busy butcher's. You are going to be a nuisance. You want three yards of salted intestine. This will be the casing and is what the butcher uses himself to make his sausages (if he is a good butcher). You also need some pork, say two pounds of lean shoulder and a pound of fat (all best from a `manufacturer's pig' i.e. one older, bigger, fattier and tastier than most sold retail). A glance at any Victorian cooking book will tell you that sausages can be made of beef, mutton and veal as well. Jane Grigson's invaluable Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery describes the different mixtures made in France. There's also good advice in Frank Ashbrook's Butchering, Proces- sing and Preservation of Meat, but you don't need to bother with any of these at this stage. Back home, Monday evening, put the intestines to soak in cold water. You might as well use the bath: you will need it later anyway and the mistress certainly won't want you under her feet in the kitchen. Slip a note on the bathroom door putting the room out of bounds for the next 36 hours, and change the lock: the sausages are to be a surprise. Find a sharp knife, a chopping board, and a mincer. Cut the meat up, remove any skin which will block the mincer, make sure the mincer blade is sharp or it will bruise rather than mince, and put the meat through the mincer. It is unimportant whether this is done on the landing or in the bathroom. Add a table- spoonful of salt, a very good pinch each of sugar and saltpetre, spices as wished and a large wineglassful of wine. Leave the mix- ture and the casings overnight.
Next day get the children or some friends with raincoats into the bathroom. This is the good bit. Attach one end of the casing onto the bath tap (no, no, the cold one): if you've been so silly as to replace the bath with a shower, use that, but you must unscrew the nozzle first — you'll need a step-ladder. Turn the water on. Chaps infallibly enjoy watching the casing fill and squirm round in the bath — take turns and amusement turns into hilarity when the water finds a leak. This is one reason why you are filling the casing with water: the other is to clean it through. Once the leak is identified, discard that part of the casing. In the unlikely event of there being no leak, no one sprayed and no hilarity, one can always be made. I always make two or three first in case.
Next take a leak-free length of casing and thread it onto a previously moistened funnel. Fill the funnel with the mixture. Now one chap pushes the mixture down the funnel into the casing while another squidges it along the casing — Oh dear! I forget to tell you to tie the far end of the casing. Make sure the casing is full. You don't want sausages with air-pockets, do you? It would all have been easier if you had a sausage funnel attachment for the mincer but you haven't; it's better to let the minced mixture stand; and funnels are more fun. Last, tie up the sausage in the lengths you want and hang over the bath.
Wake the lady up, bright and early on Christmass morning. You had better look at the television to find the right words but they're along the lines, 'Happy Xmas, dear. You've worked so hard. I know the bird will be wonderful. Why don't you have a nice lie-in? I'll see to breakfast for everyone.' Then there's lots of 'Oh darl- ings', she is given her sausage and allowed back in the bathroom.
Digby Anderson
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