"Improvisation is the art of being completely O.K. with not knowing what the f— you’re doing" Mick Napier
It's one of those improvisation days as far as dinner is concerned. This week I've been trying to clean out some of the half-used jars that lurk in my fridge and I've been doing quite well. Some of them will just be replaced - the mustard, the tomato purée, the capers ... But some are just half used chutney, pesto, curry paste ... Who knows. Earlier this week I made some roast chicken bathed in some kind of paste - I still have no idea what it was, but it was a very successful roast. So today I decided that I would begin with a half jar of home-made caramelised onion chutney.
Now some days I am just not up to improvisation, which doesn't necessarily mean I use a recipe, it might just mean I cook something I know well. But today I feel up to the challenge. I will come to why the sausages and the apples are in the picture too. The chutney, however was the starting point.
Now there is not a huge amount left in the jar, although I guess I could add to it with another jar, or one of those jars of gifted and probably expensive jars of caramelised onions in my reserve drawer. But I really feel I should do something rather more special than a Saturday night what's in the fridge kind of dinner with them. I should use them though. My jar however, is a chutney, not straight onions, so is probably already a little way along the sweet spectrum.
Step one - what does a caramelised onion chutney go with? - well cheese and porky things like ham and bacon. Which is when I thought of sausages, although I did not realise until I had unwrapped them fresh from the freezer that these are actually beef sausages. Oh well onions go with beef too. Potatoes? So shall I go for a tray bake or a braise? There's some red wine sitting around waiting to be either drunk or used as well, and I bought some mushrooms today. They might be a good thing to use. And I've just remembered the couple of remaining Brussels sprouts which really should be used soon.
Step two - what kind of dish? A tray bake? - already considered above and that could include potatoes, which I love. A braised sausage dish with a mushroomy, red wine gravy? Also with potatoes as an accompaniment? Pasta? I'm not really sure I'm convinced of the marriage of onion chutney and pasta, although I'm sure somebody has thought of it. Pastry? I've actually been hankering for a bit of pastry something for a while. Not really quiche though is it? Maybe a non creamy kind of tart. Yes some kind of tart.
Step three - look for ideas on the net. I always try a general search which doesn't include The Guardian first. And here's an interesting thing - The Guardian rarely comes up in that kind of general search unless you mention one of their columnists. Now I completely understand why my blog doesn't come up - because I've not done all the things you need to do to be found easily, but surely a newspaper like The Guardian has?
First find - a quiche, and a pretty simple one at that - just a layer of caramelised onion marmalade covered with the usual cream and egg quiche mixture, plus cheese. The recipe is called Cheese and onion tart with caramelised onion marmalade and comes from an English company called Tracklements. Tracklements? It's apparently an old LIncolnshire word which means accompaniments - and that's really why I included this recipe. I liked the word. But the quiche didn't excite me. I don't really think I have enough of my chutney to cover the whole base of a quiche in a satisfying manner and I really don't think a straight quiche is really the right thing.
On Taste I found these Caramelised onion and sausage tarts - made with puff pastry and I guess more what I was beginning to think of, but it somehow looked somewhat unappetising. It also used feta, which apart from not having any, didn't seem right to me. Still I noted that the sausages were cooked before adding to the tart.
Then things started to get more interesting with Anna del Conte's Upside-down sausage and onion tart on The Happy Foodie website Penguin's cookbook marketing website. It looked rather glorious, but I don't have that many sausages, even if, as I discovered, they are sliced in half. Those sausages were fried and then braised in red wine and water which is interesting, but the onions were just softened, although, of course, my chutney could easily be substituted and I might just have enough. It was another puff pastry recipe, but I wanted to use shortcrust - which you could of course. Very tempting - but no - not enough sausages was the main problem. Another time perhaps. Although I could make a smaller one?
In the UK, delicious. came up with Sage and onion sausage tart, which is possibly a bit like my first imaginings. Until I read the recipe, because they take the sausage meat out of the casing, and then mix it with sage, fried onions, egg and breadcrumbs before putting it in the cooked pastry case, finally finishing for the last 10 minutes of cooking with trickled honey and sesame seeds. Sort of interesting - the honey would be an interesting idea if my chutney wasn't already a bit sweet. But I really didn't fancy the breadcrumbs - sausages generally already have breadcrumbs in them - or crumbling into sausage meat. Different but not for me.
At this point I turned to The Guardian, as I always eventually do - and surprise, surprise first up was Ottolenghi with his Jubilee sausage pie with piccalilli yoghurt. Now it's a pie, which is not what I was thinking, and once again the sausagemeat has been removed from the sausages so, no I'm not going to go for this. However, that picalilli yoghurt gave me pause for thought, because I also have a half empty jar of home-made piccalilli in the fridge. Could I blitz a bit and use it as extra flavour, or would it detract from the caramelised onions? His onions are just fried until golden. As always it's an intriguing mix however. He also has breadcrumbs but also hawaij spice (or curry powder), parsley chives and garlic. Sort of Anglo-Indian and worth considering on another day, but not today, and somewhat reluctantly I think the piccalilli would be too much. Maybe a bit of mustard instead. It makes you think though doesn't it? I've been wondering what to do with the jars of piccalilli I made. Blitz them into other things. "Improvising is what leads to discovery." says Mark Diacono and that's a kind of discovery. Like finding what 'tracklements' means.
Of course Nigel Slater had to have something worth looking at too - Sausage and onion tatin. It's a bit like Anna del Conte's tatin version but a bit simpler in that the sausages are just fried and then chopped a bit, and it's the onions that get the flavouring treatment - with sherry vinegar when they have been fried to golden. Puff pastry again. Quick, easy, but no cheese - I fancy cheese - and an upside-down tart is always a bit nerve-wracking isn't it? So not today Nigel. Although I may use his choice of cheese, cream and just one egg as in his Cheese and onion tart as the binding factor.
At this point I gave up, as had The Guardian. I'm being a bit lazy as far as research goes. After all I could peruse my cookery book collection but the day creeps on and I am almost at decision time. At this moment I am thinking a quiche tart base, filled, with fried sausages cut into chunks, with a mix of my chutney, some more fried onions, some sage an egg, some grated cheese and a bit of cream. Maybe some bits of ham cooked with the sausage. David recently bought a great big chunk of ham on the bone, which needs using. Tempted by mustard too, but I think that might get lost and also wouldn't add anything. Of course when it comes to it I might change my mind again. I mean what about those two Brussels sprouts?
Remember those apples in the background of my initial photograph? Here's a thought I could add a bit of apple to the mix. Probably not although it could work, but I had already decided that it's Saturday and we'll have dessert. Not those apples. They are big ones, which David likes, but we also have some small ones, so I thought I would just peel, halve and core them, stuff the centre with some sultanas which I have been soaking in limoncello - from my home-made supply - and bake with all the usual stuff or some of it - butter, cinnamon, maple syrup and/or, sugar, honey, golden syrup plus a bit of lemon and/orange in some form or another.
Dinner almost sorted. Crossing fingers it works out.
“[M]ost of the cooking that happens in the world doesn’t involve recipes. Most people, when they’re cooking every day, are just cooking. They’re doing things that are familiar,” Amanda Hesser
'Familiar' - the benefit of being very old and having been cooking for decades.
POSTSCRIPT
The last day of August and of winter - August 31
2022 - Angels, cocktails and cakes
2021 - The importance of poo
2020 - The savoir-vivre of Nice
2019 - The Mediterranean diet
2018 - Nothing
What an interesting read, but I am mystefied with what is actually going to appear. Rosemary says "You will have to wait and see" Pictures of the final results tomorrow!!