“Italian” sausage

I remembered a recipe from the South Beach Cookbook for a turkey sausage but that wasn’t really very tasty, from what I recalled, and contained ground nuts.  It DID make me think that making some sort of italian style sausage, with fennel as the predominant flavour would be good.  I googled some and found the basic elements, many which include sugar.  This is what I ended up with:

450 g/ 1 lb ground pork

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tble fennel seeds, ground with a mortar and pestle

1 tbls, paprika (not smoked)

1 tbls minced garlic (or garlic puree but NOT garlic powder or salt!)

1/2 tsp black or white pepper (slightly different flavours, so as you prefer)

1 tbls red wine vinegar

1 tbls olive oil

Mix it all together and pop it in the fridge overnight.  Then you can either shape it in to patties or fry it up as loose meat.  If you fry it loose, leave a bit in the pan and add your beaten eggs and some thinly sliced green onions (or red onion – I like both options equally) and scramble it up. Lovely.

You can add some onion to the sausage meat to begin with, if you prefer, just make sure it is very finely minced and not in huge chunks.  It would probably be lower fat with turkey but also probably less yummy.  Your call.

Post Cheat-Day Breakfast

My favourite breakfast.  Not so much a recipe as a jumping off point.

Two eggs, scrambled with a handful of sliced spring onions and a couple of rashers of cooked streaky bacon.  I sprinkle it with a teaspoon of excellent strong Parmesan cheese (not from a carton!) and eat with 5 or so halved cherry tomatoes.  Fast and easy and variable:

- add any herb you like, and basil is good

- add spinach and/or beans  or serve either or both on the side

- add leftover shredded meat of any sort

- use shallots (great with Thyme) or red onion (great with chopped cilantro)

If you think you can afford to a dollop of sour cream is always nice.

I have a nice fish stew queued up and an experimental breakfast Quiche in the oven as I type.  We’ll see if it works out.