THE BRAIN AND I

My sausage making activities are currently on hold.  The Ex got custody of the sausage-making machine.  So for now I just eat ‘em.

A couple of weeks back I was in Mike’s Café in Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill, and had the bangers and mash.

That’s 4 bangers, a higher number than is customary, and the biggest pile of mash I think I’ve ever been served. I wished both elements of the meal had been better but it is a café after all, possibly a caff.

Then not so very much later I ate at Konaki a very old school, but I think somewhat superior Greek restaurant in Coptic Street in Bloomsbury.  

I had the pastourma as a starter and they were great.  And they made me remember a time when I thought pastourma were madly exotic. 

Back home in Manningtree I cooked bangers and mash for myself, with sausages from the Ragmarsh Farm Shop.

These are good sausages and actually the mash was pretty good too, if I say it myself.  A word to the wise: these are supposedly ‘baking potatoes’ – but I just mashed with load of butter and no milk or cream – worked a treat.

And then I was flat-sitting in London, and bought a savaloy at Dennis Chippy (actually more of a kebab shop) in Lea Bridge Road, E17.  How often do you get the chance to buy a savaloy? 

I know we’ve discussed savaloys before – do they contain brain or not?  Well some certainly do.  As for Denis’s, well, it had a very smooth consistency.  Could  have been brain, could have been rusk.  Who knows?  That’s the way it is with sausages when you don’t make them yourself.