Toad in the hole & the hell’s angels

Grangedale have now improved their recipe for top-grade lidl sausages! So naturally I had to try them out by making a fabulous toad-in-the-hole. Although you can get all the ingredients for this simple dish in Lidl, I did slip up in the egg department. Lidl currently only sells dutch imported eggs which strikes me as rather a waste of resources. I therefore used a large organic egg I got from my local farmer’s market. I’m afraid I can be unavoidably middle class like that sometimes…

Tip: do not shop in Lidl on a Sunday. I had to queue (this is unheard of!) and it seemed a convention of Hell’s Angels descended on lidl for finkbrau and “Chic” hairspray. I’m serious. Who uses hairspray anymore anyway? The idea of it makes me choke.

Toad In The Hole (Delia-inspired recipe. Thanks, Delia)

- 6 “Grangedale” pork ‘n’ leek sausages (don’t bother faffing around with any of the other sausages in Lidl, at £1.79 for 6 you can’t go wrong)

- 75g flour
- 75ml milk
- 1 egg

- an onion
- some sugar and olive oil
- vegetable stock
- 1 tablespoon flour

1. For the Delia method, you need two flameproof dishes. In the first (which will be the ultimate toad/hole dish) place the sausages.

2. In the other, arrange the sliced onion which you will have coated in a little sugar, olive oil and worcestershire sauce.

3. Place  both in oven at 180 degrees – sausages on top

4. Meanwhile make the batter by mixing egg into seived flour, then whisking in milk.

5. Season, you could add something from Lidl’s growing herb selection like I did. Yum.

6. After 10 minutes take everything out of the oven, put the sausages on a medium flame and add the batter mix. If there’s no fat coming out of the sausages, add some oil and make sure the fat is nice and hot before you add the batter.

7. Bake for another 30 minutes on the top shelf,

8. Make a gravy from the roasted onions, some stock and whatever else you’ve managed to pick up in that Lidl binge. Just put the onion dish on a medium flame and add the stock, stirring all the time – mix the flour with a little water before adding to the mixture if you want it to thicken up.

The first party: drag queens and roast lamb

To kick things off, I had the first dinner party on Friday night. Ok, I didn’t use exclusively Lidl products this time but for the most part I managed it. I invited my friend and his boyfriend, who becomes Vivienne on weekends.

The menu was as follows:

- Leek and potato soup with home-made croutons

- Roast lamb with garlic & rosemary, roast potatoes and watercress salad

- Chocolate orange tart with drambuie

- Cheese course

If you’ve never tried making your own bread, you really ought to try out Lidl’s own brand “Landgut” range of bread mixes. They’re all absolutely top-notch, and terribly easy. In Edinburgh it’s not that easy to get proper bread, so this stuff goes down really well. I’d especially recommend the sunflower seed mix, or rye-bread. Pics to be posted soon, I promise.

Truthfully, I have never been this organised for a dinner party before. I started the night before by defrosting the lamb and making the tart pastry case. This is all a clever tactic to help me repress my kitchen-fascist personality facet which rears its ugly head a few times a week.

Ultimately the whole thing was a roaring success, but I was so full that in the morning I only managed to gobble a small piece of that chocolate tart for breakfast.