I have been working on this recipe for a while, now, determined to get it right. I think most people enjoy sausages, with mash, or chips or as part of a huge fried breakfast. What I love about this recipe is that is definitely a voyaging one, which means that you can have sausages half way across the ocean, should you so choose. Not something many people can boast of, unless they have a freezer. In true voyaging style, the ones in the photo above are served with 'Surprise' peas. Judging by the rest of the stuff on the table, the sea is pretty smooth! These sausages are also quite fast to make, especially if you already have some sausage seasoning mixed: once you've cooked the sausages in the pressure cooker, they only need a few minutes in the frying pan to brown them to your taste. Apart from my recipe for chorizo, this will be my first post about seitan, and I think it's a particularly good one to start with.
I
am besotted with seitan recipes: the texture is so different from
most other vegetarian and vegan foods, it’s cheap and making ‛meat’
with it is so quick. These ‛English’ sausages are great on
their own, in a bun/sandwich or as part of an ‛English’
breakfast. The seasoning is based on that used in Cumberland
sausage and the couscous is to replace the rusk that is always used
in British bangers, to keep the juices in the sausage so that they
don’t dry out. In this way they're quite different from
Bratwurst or other 100% meat sausages. In the days when I
occasionally ate meat, I always found these tricky to cook because of
the tendency of the ‛100% meat’ sausage to dry out, especially if
they were also low fat. Of course, the result isn’t as juicy as
a good quality meat banger, but I do feel that the addition of
couscous keeps it a little more moist. If you don’t want to use
couscous, go for the chorizo sausage recipe instead (link above) instead, and substitute the sausage
seasoning for that included in the chorizo recipe.
Instead
of the herbs, spices and salt in the recipe, shown in italics, I
recommend using 3 tsp Annie's English sausage seasoning, for
a more complex flavour (see recipe at the bottom of the page.) There's a generous amount of seasoning, because the seitan otherwise has
no flavour. It does in fact, have a slight, indescribable taste, which can be
a bit intrusive, and this is why the ingredients include vinegar.
Most of the recipes that I’ve seen always insist on ‘apple cider’
vinegar (what other sort of cider is there? Surely the definition of
cider is fermented apple juice?), but any vinegar, apart from
Balsamic, would work just fine. So no doubt would lemon juice, but
vinegar is cheaper.
Makes
6 sausages, 2 servings
Ingredients
1/3
cup couscous
1/2
tsp yeast extract or miso
2/3
cup boiling water
3/4
tsp crushed black pepper
1/2
tsp thyme
3/4
tsp sage
1/8
- 1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4
tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp
salt
OR 3 tsp Annie's English sausage seasoning
1/4 cup (60
ml) water
1
tbsp soya sauce
1
tsp vinegar
1
heaped tsp tahini
1
tbsp olive oil or deodorised coconut oil, melted
2
tbsp chickpea flour
1/3
cup vital wheat gluten
- Cut baking parchment into 6 sheets, approximately 200/8" x 150/6".
- Put the couscous in a large bowl.
- Mix the yeast extract/miso in 2/3 cup boiling water and then pour it over the couscous. Cover the bowl and leave it for about ten minutes until the water has been absorbed.
- Now mix the seasoning into the couscous.
- Add the 1/4 cup of water and mix well.
- Then add the soya sauce, followed by the vinegar, tahini and oil. Mix this all very thoroughly, because once you have added the vital wheat gluten it will be difficult to incorporate the other ingredients evenly.
- Now add the chickpea flour and the vital wheat gluten and quickly mix it in to the rest of the ingredients. Again do this very thoroughly. I find a butter knife the best tool.
- Mix as well as you can with your knife and then use your hand, incorporating all the flour that will be trying to stick to the edge of the bowl. Keep mixing until everything until you have a smooth dough and it stops sticking to your hands. You should end up with a fairly soft mix.
- Place the dough on a board. (Make sure you clean the bowl really thoroughly, because the gluten sticks as soon as it dries out, making it quite difficult to clean. Soak it for a while if you've left much behind, before cleaniing.) Roughly shape it into a rectangle about as long as you want your sausages to be. (The dough is nowhere near as accommodating as bread dough when it comes to shaping).
- Cut the dough in half and then thirds so that you have six equal lumps of dough. I usually have to pinch a bit of dough from one or two to get them all more or less the same size.
- Shape the sausages to be best of your ability – the wrapping finishes the job. Don’t worry about gaps and creases. The cooking sorts out most of that. It would be fun to try to make one long sausage, wrap it up in baking paper and then form it into a coil to put onto the trivet. This would produce and authentic Cumberland sausage shape, which would be fun and impressive, but I’m not sure how well it would work.
- Now put each sausage, centred at the edge of a piece of baking paper and roll it up tightly. This helps make it round. Twist the paper at either end, until it is squashed against the end of the sausage. Do this with all six sausages.
- Put the trivet into your pressure cooker. Add about half a cup of water – don’t let it cover the trivet. Place the sausages onto the trivet – it doesn’t matter if they are stacked – and bring up to pressure; cook for 5 minutes.
- Let the pressure come down naturally.
When
they’re cooked, take the sausages out of the pressure cooker and
unwrap them. Put them somewhere where they can cool and dry
out a little before storing them. I find they keep best in my
wooden bread bin! Fry them before using them – the added olive
oil gives additional flavour and I enjoy cooking them until they are
slightly crisp.
Serve with mashed or smashed potatoes and vegetables, or any way that you enjoy your sausages. They will stand up happily to barbecuing or cooking on the beach.
Annie’s
English Sausage seasoning:
Makes
enough for about 60 sausages, or 20 servings
Ingredients
1
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1
tsp ground mace
2
1/2 tbsp salt
2
tbsp black pepper
2
tbsp rubbed sage
2
tsp onion powder
1
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2
1/4 tsp thyme
3/4
tsp cayenne
1
1/2 tsp ground coriander
- If you don’t have ground nutmeg or mace (which don’t keep well ready-ground) grind up about 1/2 a nutmeg in a mortar or blender. Remove 1 1/2 tsp and add to a bowl.
- Take several blades of mace, grind to a powder, remove 1 tsp and add to the nutmeg.
- Now add all the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Put into a glass jar and keep as cool and dark as feasible.
Add
3 tsp of sausage seasoning to 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten,
ie, per 6 sausages.
