“Sausage wars”

Fine Food with

Charles Campion

Food writer and critic

• It’s time to go left field rather than safety-first
• “Fashion or for keeps?”
• “New year and new possibilities”
• “What is in a name?”
• “The art of shopping”

When it comes to enthusiasm for sausages and pies I bow to no man. For me the humble snorker plays a pivotal role on many menus, filling the gap between lumps of meat various and those more complicated dishes that tickle the chef’s fancy. But given their often utilitarian role, sausages can be surprisingly sophisticated

Ask an East Anglian tucking into a Newmarket sausage whether they would prefer an Oxford sausage and they won’t go on about technicalities, seasoning or the precise amount of sage or rusk involved; their local sausage demands blind loyalty and only the familiar will do.

The British Isles has a pretty good track record in respect of sausages, but let us not forget the “grind everything small and do not enquire to closely where the meat comes from” school of thought. Cast you mind back to the dreaded Saveloy sold almost exclusively through chip shops: orange-skinned, sludgy inside and shockingly cheap. It’s a sensible rule of thumb that if a sausage sells for less than the cheapest meat available on the market it is best not to enquiry too closely about the precise composition of that banger.

Recent events in Kyrgyzstan have put the diplomatic spotlight on sausages. A Scottish gold miner called Mr McFeat hit Twitter with an assertion that local Kyrgyz delicacy – the ‘chukuk’ sausage – looked like a horse’s penis. This is not far off the mark as said large sausage is made from horsemeat and is a second cousin to the spicy ‘sucuk’ sausage that you’ll find in Turkish restaurants. Whether or not the sausage in question was made from horse doesn’t really matter, the Kyrgyz authorities rounded up Mr McFeat and charged him under the race hate laws which left the ex-pat gold digger facing a five year jail stretch. With a straight face the Kyrgyz establishment issued a statement asserting that such offences could lead to war between the UK and the former Soviet republic. After Mr McFeat had been chased up the road by a howling mob (allegedly), he was smuggled out of Kirgizstan and banned from returning for five years. In a way you have to respect the Kyrgyz for sticking up for their sausage. Perhaps the next great initiative in the search for World Peace should be intercontinental sausage sharing? If so, the process has been somewhat left behind.

For decades the Andouillette has puzzled Brits and promoted sales of hot mustard – the only condiment that will cover up its feral whiff. This is a sausage made from chitterlings and pig’s pipework, and as you cut into it the aroma of poorly maintained urinals rolls across the table. Many moons ago, on a trip to Paris with a touring rugby team, I was present at a serious brawl which kicked off when various lumpy Antipodeans refused to eat (and so to pay for) anything that smelt so bad. What the waiter had described as a “big pork sausage” when taking the order turned out to be an Andouillette. So for sausage diplomacy to work we’ll need to try some dodgy stuff from the other side of the Channel and the French will have to embrace the glory that is our Cumberland sausage. I don’t see how we could lose. Perhaps we could start by sending an emissary to Kyrgyzstan with some traditional British sausages for a grand fraternal tasting? Then we could move on to a sensible EEC sausage referendum when deciding whether to fry or grill.