Faggots and Gravy

I've never been a big fan of offal, but I've been inspired to give it a go lately for a couple of reasons.

It was always cheap, and it's even cheaper now that it's out of fashion.  I'm becoming a bit obsessive about not wasting food so I'm all for using the whole animal and not just the premium cuts.  Last but most definitely not least, I seem to keep seeing it on cookery programmes lately, most notably River Cottage (available on 4OD, with liver curry less than ten minutes into this episode), and some chefs that I really respect are championing it as being really tasty.

I've moved around a lot in my life and lived in a lot of different towns, and I've noticed that while greengrocers, fishmongers and other useful small shops are falling by the wayside, most towns do have a decent local butcher.  We're lucky enough to have some really good ones within striking distance so when I saw faggots at one of them I snapped them up.  You can make your own (there are plenty of recipes online) but to be honest I wouldn't bother.  You're going to need to visit a proper butcher to get the ingredients anyway, and these ones were so cheap and so good that I simply couldn't have improved on them.  Call me lazy if you like, but I don't bother making my own sausages for much the same reasons.

Traditionally faggots are served with mashed potatoes, green veg and onion gravy, but we decided on swede and carrot mash tonight.  No particular reason, we just felt like it - recipes are not rigid sets of instructions and it's good to muck about with them to suit your own tastes.  Also, my girlfriend is trying to lose some weight with WeightWatchers at the moment so we're cutting down on carbs.  Apparently there are no points in vegetables though.  My normal cooking style is not really WeightWatchers-friendly so I'll try to remember to point it out when I've adapted something to make it a little less fattening.

We kept the onion gravy though.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.  Incidentally, we've recently moved and the oven thermostat in the new place is actually accurate so for the first time in some years my trusty oven thermometer is redundant!  It takes an age to heat up though.  Anyway, while that's doing, chop an onion into nice big wedges , lay them out into a roasting dish and splash olive oil and thyme over them.

You really need to have a store cupboard (a topic I'm likely to return to) with a good stock of herbs and spices.  Years ago, I was making a curry and a housemate expressed surprise at the amount of herbs and spices I had.  She said it would surely be cheaper to buy a jar of curry sauce than the half-dozen jars of spices I was using.  Well, yes, if you're only thinking of that one particular curry, but they last a long time and they don't all run out at once so once you've got a cupboard full of them it's very cheap and easy to keep it stocked up.

Anyway, sauce from jars is horrible.

Let your onion cook for about half an hour or forty minutes to let the slices caramelise.  It doesn't matter if a couple of the smaller bits get burnt because you can just pick them out later, but don't let the whole lot get blackened.  They will if your oven is too hot - if you're not convinced that your oven thermostat is accurate it's worth spending a fiver on an oven thermometer!

When they're done, make up some cooking liquor.  I used half a pint of beer, half a pint of vegetable stock and a splash of worcestershire sauce (because I'm physically incapable of cooking anything in liquid without adding a splash of Lea&Perrins).  Again, this isn't a set of strict instructions: you could use red wine instead of the beer, or if you want to save a few pence or you've got something against alcohol you could just use a pint of stock.  Use chicken or beef stock if you prefer those flavours (come to think of it, beef would probably be better but I didn't have any).  I am reliably informed that the beer added an extra WeightWatchers point or two, so that's something that you might want to bear in mind.

An excellent money-saving tip is never to enter a supermarket without a list.  I used my penultimate stock cube tonight, so I made sure to write that on my list ready for the supermarket run come next payday.

Put the faggots on top of the onions and pour the cooking liquor in.  We had some mushrooms in the fridge that wanted using up, so I cut them up and chucked them in as well.

Pop the roasting tray back in the oven, back it off to 180C or so, and leave to cook for another 40 minutes.

Towards the end of the cooking time, prepare your mash.  Now, I absolutely love swede but it is a royal pain in the bum to prepare.  Raw, it's quite unbelievably tough and it always takes longer to cook than I'm expecting.  Cooking time depends on how small you can be bothered to chop it up (I quickly lose interest, even with my biggest and sharpest knife) but it's going to need at least 10-15 minutes.

My mum taught me to put root vegetables into cold water and then bring it to the boil, so you need to add the time it takes to boil the water - so it will be more like 20-25 minutes, depending on your hob.  I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what difference this makes but old habits die hard.

We had a carrot knocking about that wanted using up, so that went in as well.  Carrots don't take as long to cook as swede, so I should really advise you to add it to the pan later but there was something good on TV and I didn't want to be running back and forth to the kitchen so I just cut it in half (larger pieces will cook more slowly than smaller pieces) and threw the whole lot in the same pan.

I will admit that I cocked up somewhat at this point.  As always, the swede took longer than I expected to cook.  Timing isn't critical for the faggots though (especially as they're cooking in liquid), so I backed off the heat in the oven to 120C, just to keep them warm, until the veg was done.

Drain the veg, chuck in a knob of butter (about half the amount I would have used if it weren't for the WeightWatchers) and mash.  In my opinion swede needs an enormous amount of black pepper mashed into it but my girlfriend doesn't like the stuff.  Weird.

I used a half-swede and one carrot, which made ample portions for the two of us plus about the same amount again which has gone into the freezer in a tupperware.  It'll heat up nicely in the microwave some other evening.

Serve the swede and a faggot, spoon the onions and mushrooms over the top, then pour some of the cooking liquor over.  It doesn't really thicken so I'm not sure you can call it gravy, but it is dead easy and dead tasty.

Don't bother wiping around the edge of the plate because you're a home cook, not a chef.

Taste verdict
The girlfriend and I both loved this.  The faggots are absolutely bursting with flavour, and all of it good.  They're like the most densely packed, fully flavoured sausages you've ever eaten.  I recently introduced my girlfriend to the delights of haggis, which she remains unsure about, and she declared this to be like haggis but better.

Lots of people (including myself, until recently) go eurgh at the thought of offal.  There's nothing eurgh about this dish - it was just a hot, delicious, hearty plate of tasty food.

The other nice thing from my point of view was that it was quite low-maintenance: it took a long time to cook, but most of it didn't need any attention from me so I got more than my usual share of sofa-and-TV time tonight.

Financial verdict
Excellent.  Since I've started keeping a close eye on what it costs to eat, I've found that home cooked dinners tends to gravitate around £1-2 per portion unless I go wild with luxury ingredients and this falls well into the financial comfort zone.

Two faggots - £1.10 from the butcher (made in-house.  Their products are not all organic, but they are all locally sourced and not intensively farmed)
Half a pint of beer - £0.90 (I drank the other half)
Quarter of a swede - £0.25
Onion - £0.30 (always buy onions loose.  They are much, much more expensive if you buy them in plastic or string bags - and what if you don't use them all before they go off?  Buying them loose, you can get just the amount you need)
Mushrooms - needed using up, but probably about £0.15 (comment about buying loose applies here too)
Carrot - needed using up, but probably about £0.15 (and here)
Stock cube, thyme, butter, olive oil - pennies, from store.


£1.43 per portion


The Skinny
Cut onion into wedges.  Lay out into roasting tray.  Splash olive oil and sprinkle thyme.

Cook at 200C for 30-40 minutes until soft, not burnt.

Return to the sofa, watch the news.

Pick out burnt bits.

Boil up a pint of cooking liquor in a pan.  This can be stock, or a mix of stock and wine or beer plus a splash of worcestershire sauce.

Place one faggot per person on top of the onions.  Pour the liquor into the roasting tray.  Put it all back into the oven.  Reduce heat to 180C and cook for a further 40 minutes.

Return to the sofa, watch some Top Gear on Dave.

Boil and prepare your veg to be ready at the same time as the faggots.

Serve veg and faggots, spoon onions over the top, pour on some liquor as if it were gravy.


WeightWatchers ProPoints
7ish