Sausages

My favourite food! And I know I'm not alone. There are so many variations - the Germans have their Weiners and Frankfurters, the Italians have their salami, the British have their bangers and chipolatas (affectionately also known as 'chips'), the Mexicans have their chorizo and us Chinese have our unimaginatively-named Chinese sausages (or lap cheong).

Doing a Wikipedia search boggles the mind - there are so many types (it runs in the hundreds) of sausages and they are actually classified into categories such as cooked, cooked smoked, fresh, fresh smoked, dry etc!

But throwing that all aside, I've had a long association with sausages. Since that 1st morsel I tasted in my school canteen - the lady pan fried what looked like normal canned cocktail sausages, but she was always able to make the crispy on the outside but not burnt, and melts-in-the-mouth on the inside. I began my life long search for the perfect sausage. To this day, I have never found the brand or the cooking method (does she boil them first?) that produces quite the same effect.

Thru the years, I used to think that all sausages looked the same - what I knew of as canned cocktail sausages. But then I went to UK and started eating their bangers which totally disgusted me. It had a horrible 'piggy' smell, was raw and liked to 'explode' (hence the name) and sacriledge of all sacriledge - they called them sausages too! I longed for a frankfurter!

Today I found my perfect chipolata - all this time I've been buying the wrong thing. I've been buying chicken chipolatas but by chance today I saw pork and tried them and I'm in heaven!

For me, I've had a life long love affair with frankfurters, can't go wrong with any one, but just the brand - have yet to find a brand that isn't overly salty when eaten neat. I remember in my ex-company, after a particularly tiring morning, all that I need to perk me up was to toss my frankfurters into the toaster oven with some hotdog bread, slap on the butter, cheese and mustard, toast the bread until the cheese melts, slap on the frankfurters and glugs of tomato and chilli and bring to mouth - absolute bliss! Enough to drive away any dark clouds.

But my life long quest for the perfect cocktail sausages isn't over. I hope to be rewarded one day.

Meanwhile, just to finish off with a bit of trivia:
The difference between a Full English Breakfast and a Big American Breakfast:

Full English: bacon, eggs, toast, bangers, baked beans, kidneys, grilled tomato, mushrooms, potatoes/hash brown/bubble & sqeak. The Scots vary it with black pudding or haggis.
Big American: bacon, eggs, sausages and toast with baked beans and hash brown

Hungry eh? ;)