Beef and tomato sausages

Some of you may remember that last year we made an attempt to make some sausages.  We weren't entirely pleased with the result - they were a lot like burgers inside a sausage skin!  The sausage skins languished in the back of the fridge, forgotten and out of date.  I forgot about my mincer and sausage filler, languishing equally neglected in the back of the cupboard (but mercifully not going out of date!).

From time to time I pondered the idea of trying again, but never quite got around to it.

Until, inspired by Jonathan Brown's recent sausagy blog posts, I decided to have another go this weekend.  I couldn't put the sausages in skins, but at least I could make an attempt at the sausage meat.

I began with 500g of rather nice minced beef from Chatsworthand half a pot of  semi-dried tomatoes.

Into this I added half a tub of fresh bread crumbs (I nearly always have breadcrumbs in the freezer - I blitz leftover bread in the blender every couple of weeks or so) and two very healthy squeezes of concentrated tomato paste.

Then I mooshed them all together by hand until it looked like sausage meat and not like hamburger meat!  Then I left the mixture to sit for a couple of hours for the flavours to mingle.

The grill in our oven really doesn't do a very good job, so I ended up frying them.  And we had them with mushrooms, bacon and baked beans for a late Sunday brunch.  They were very delicious.

 (The red wine was for Sunday dinner, much, much later and not for brunch, no matter how late.  

The beer was a different matter! 

I had ginger beer with mine. Much less alcoholic than beer)

I've been reading Jonathan's other sausage blogs with close attention.  Might try pork sausages this coming weekend.  It's not as though I am short of pork meat.  Plus, of course, I have a mincer.  With a sausage attachment.  And now some sausage skins to boot!

While I was in the kitchen over the weekend, I made a leek and cheese tart as well.  That too was very delicious.  We've been having it with home amde mushroom soup for our lunches this week.