Toad in the hole makes the ordinary extraordinary - Joe Bennett

Toad in the hole is a thing of three parts: toad, hole and gravy

OPINION

Now look, I have just improved on what I thought to be unimprovable and even though it is late in the evening, I feel it is my duty to let you know about it because it may give you pleasure, and if one can give pleasure in this life, one should do so. “Let me do it now and not defer it,” runs the old Irish adage, which somehow always brings a tear to this rheumy old eye, “for I shall not pass this way again.”

Only now, of course, I have looked up the adage and find that it isn’t Irish. Rather it was coined by a certain Etienne de Grillet du Mabillier, who started life promisingly during the French Revolution by being condemned to death at the age of 17, but who somehow managed to escape the guillotine and flee with his brother to Demerara in South America in 1793.

After such a fine start it was always going to be hard to maintain the pace, and sure enough in later life old Etienne became a Quaker and a general doer of good, which is of course admirable in its way, but nowhere near as much fun as almost being guillotined.

Regardless, he is unlikely ever to have heard of the unimprovable thing that I have just improved because it is an example of cuisine at its most Anglo-Saxon. It is toad in the hole, which if done in French - and I doubt it ever has been - would be crapeau dans le trou.

I have loved toad in the hole for as long as I can remember, and now that I have improved it - have created, if you like, crapeau de luxe - I am confident not only that I will continue to love it for however much time is left to me, but also that if dear old Etienne were to be hauled from the grave and presented with a dish of it he would embrace it like a long-lost sister.

Toad in the hole is a thing of three parts: toad, hole and gravy. The parts are ordinary; the sum of them extraordinary. Let us begin with the toad. The toad is sausages.

Never sneer at sausages. Sausages are as old as civilisation. In Mesopotamia, there are five-thousand-year-old wall carvings depicting herbed and salted meat being stuffed into cleaned intestines as a means of preservation. And where the Sumerians went we go still.

Traditionally toad in the hole has been made with the blandest sausages, chipolatas or similar, pink little fingers, mass-produced and free of texture. And they do fine. But crapeau de luxe takes the toads upmarket. I use Cumberland sausages, all herbed and porky, but the critical addition is bacon. I wrap each sausage in a rasher of bacon. Indulgent? You bet it’s indulgent. As Etienne would be quick to remind us, we’re a long time dead.

Once the bacon-wrapped toads are cooking in the oven, it’s time for the hole. The hole is a batter made of flour, eggs and milk, every one of which ingredients were familiar to those same ancient Sumerians. How far, one wonders, have we actually come? Beat the batter to a cream, then let it sit, and start the gravy.

Gravy began life as just the juice and fats from roasted meat, so it too is as old as eating. But sausages don’t give off much in the way of juices so we start with onions, chopped, more of them than you think you need, fried slowly in butter and a little sugar until they turn the colour of Sumerian gold.

When the toads look cooked, crank up the heat in the oven till the whole thing is thrumming, then tip the batter around them, shut the door and go back to the gravy. Add whatever you want to the golden onions - herbs, mustard, Worcester sauce, wine, a little cornflour, a stock cube, but right near the end, to render it wondrous, my de luxe discovery, balsamic vinegar. (And yes, the Sumerians were familiar with both vinegar and balsam.)

Twenty minutes later, the gravy will be a thickened lusciousness and you will open the oven to find your toads surrounded by a billowing field of hole. Before that happens ring a friend or lover and tell them to come round to share it, right now. And if they ask why, raise a glass to old Etienne and say, “because I shall not pass this way again.”