Local butchers have gained a reputation for making a great variety of tasty sausages

Unfortunately it has been another casualty of Covid 19. That doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate this magnificent food though.

Sausage comes from the French word saussiche and from the Latin word salsus meaning salted. Sausages are the product of efficient butchery – once the prime cuts were used the trimmings were salted and preserved in a skin made from animal intestines. There’s evidence of salami type sausages dating back to Roman times and many references globally since then. While many countries in Europe cure sausages, the British variation is always fresh and gleaming, demanding to be eaten at once. During World War 1, when meat was scarce, butchers added water to sausages to eke them out. This caused them to explode and hence the nickname “banger” was born. By the end of the 20th century industrial meat processes coupled with the addition of cereals signalled the demise of the great British sausage.

Thankfully there has been a sausage renaissance. Butchers in Northern Ireland have a fine reputation for making great varieties of this treat. Good meat craftsmen know to cut down on rusk and use a correct ratio of fat to meat. Fat coming from a fried sausage is a reassurance that it’s been made properly. When you fry the sausages make a virtue out of the fat and add some onions. Cook until soft and golden and make into a gravy or serve with some hot mustard.

Good sausage meat is sublime in a properly made sausage roll. Use any meat sausage – pork, venison, lamb or beef and add some aromatics accordingly. Fresh thyme and apple works really well with pork. Add onions cooked in port to venison with a spoonful of red currant jelly.

Lamb will be pepped up with middle eastern spices like cumin, coriander and cardamom and garlic, chilli and lemon. Beef, onions and mustard work like a dream. Encase the flavoured meat in buttery puff pastry and bake to flaky, crisp perfection. A bit of imagination in the seasoning department will make for magic in the sausage roll.

Sausages are versatile and a well made one goes a long way. Their natural spicing will enhance vegetables, pulses and pasta without having to go overboard in quantity. My first recipe braises them in cider with parsnips. This is a one pot wonder that’s ready in half an hour and packs a punch in the flavour department. Parsnips have had the benefit of a frost now and are beautifully sweet with dry cider cutting through this. Serve with a big bowl of creamy mustardy mash for a warming Autumnal dish.

This week I should have been in Italy for the biannual Slow Food Terra Madre festival but again Covid 19 has put paid to that. I’m going to console myself by making Italian sausage with sweet peppers. Butcher sausage is flavoured with fennel seed, chilli and garlic and cooked slowly with roast peppers, passata and red wine. Serve mixed into pasta with an obscene amount of parmesan or over some pan roasted potatoes.

One of my favourite authors, Tom Robbins said “ A sausage is an image of rest, peace and tranquillity in stark contrast to the destruction and chaos of everyday life.”