A cold walk by the canal left me desperately wanting a warming filling good old british style lunch, unfortunately my girlfriends cupboard was pretty bare but there were some sausages, and digging around in a bag of what looked like roots revealed that there were in fact potatoes still just about eatable so the decision was made that it would be good old sausage and mash. Wanting however to impress the lady friend with something vaguely special I decided to make something I had till now kept my distance from, onion gravy.
Now it wasn’t that I hated onion gravy you understand, I’d hated it as a child, but most most foods I now adore, mustard, rare meat, fish, I hated as a child, so I paid that no attention. It was just . . . just . . . it was just the idea of it, I mean onion gravy urgh!!! we all know onion isn’t for gravy, I can’t think of anything that would seem less likely to make good gravy (well in fact, I can and its bisto, but moving past my snobbery). But other people rave about it and onions was the only other ingredient I could find, so it was clearly time to give it a go. ten minutes or so on BBC food found about fifty recipes all totally different so I decided I might as well make it up as I went along. Well I love onion gravy, it took a very nice but nonetheless cheap and cheerful lunch and transformed it into something distinctly special, and also earned me enough brownie points with the lady friend for her to volunteer to do all the washing up.
For a classy yet traditional british lunch you will need:
4 Sausages
preferably from the butchers, its really worth it though this time I used, Tesco ‘finest’ don’t get skinless sausages, I know skins are probably made of intestine, but come on, Hannibal Lector ate worse and he was a master chef.
A couple of handfuls of potatoes
now I know if you’re making mash your supposed to used king edwards or other big flowery potatoes but being poor, I use the same potatoes for everything and I honestly don’t notice the difference, today I ended up using new potatoes (I think, they were small)
Three small onions
this would probably be nicer with red onions but white ones will work
Butter
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Red Wine vinegar
Brown sugar
Stock (I used chicken but if you use something else don't let it keep you awake at night crying at what could have been)
Put Sausages in a frying pan on a very low heat and don’t turn them, oh and if you prick them I’l prick you, leave them there while you’re doing the rest. they should take about 40 minutes if everything else is ready but the sausages are a little raw on top then turn them over for the last few minutes. When done they should be slightly burnt and sticky on the bottom and smell amazing.
Melt a knob of butter on a low heat and add the finely chopped onions and two teaspoons of brown sugar then leave them on a low heat for about 45 minutes then add a glug of olive oil, two cloves of crushed garlic and turn the heat up to medium. When the onions are starting to go brown and sticky round the edges as they caramelize add three table spoons of balsamic vinegar stir for a few minutes then add a big glug of red wine vinegar. make up about 500 ml of chicken stock and gradually stir it in then turn the heat up by half.
While the stock is reducing peal and boil the potatoes in salted water, when they’re soft mash them up, make sure you mash them properly or you will get lumpy mash and lumpy mash is worse than conservatism then add to big glugs of milk and season with just a little salt and pepper. serve the mash then top with the sausages then pour the onion gravy generously over the top, enjoy.
