a "normal-service-has-been-resumed" sausage sandwich with honey-mustard caramelised onions

sausage sandwich with honey-mustard
caramelised onions

A big part of my life has been missing recently. Not in a lost-in-action kind of a way, just "gone". My default position as food obsessive had changed, so no longer was I eating, dreaming, reading, singing and talking my way through all things food. I had, I am afraid to say, completely lost my appetite.

While life seemed a little flat, I just couldn't face cooking, eating or photographing food. I could have posted some recipes from a little emergency store of ideas and photographs I keep, but as I uploaded text or pictures, I would have had to do some basic thinking about food and it was all too much.

Fortunately, whatever was ailing me has finally left. (I'd like to think it was some kind of alien possession, but more prosaically it was probably just some kind of niggling bug.) I woke up this morning with a monstrous appetite. I was so hungry I would have eaten my own boots, but luckily it didn't come to that as the freezer was full of emergency rations and the vegetable rack had a large onion with a sign plastered across it's pungent belly, saying "eat me." 

sausage sandwich with honey-mustard
caramelised onions

After being off my feed for the past fortnight, you may be wondering what exotic and gourmet treats I turned to as my appetite flooded back. Well it may be a little pedestrian, but I really fancied a sausage sandwich to break my abstinence and it was, if I say so myself, bloody lovely.

I posted a sausage sandwich recipe last year, but this one is a little different, with lashings of caramelised onions with honey and mustard. A pretty good way to end my fast and restore my tastebuds to full working order.

Serves 2
Skill level: Easy

ingredients:
4 x good quality, meaty sausages
1 x large onion, finely sliced
a pinch of salt
olive oil or fat from the cooked sausages
a splash of sherry vinegar (about 1 tbsp)
1 tbsp Dijon or wholegrain mustard
2-3 tsp honey
HP sauce or tomato ketchup, to serve
fresh artisan bread (I used homemade sourdough bread)

directions:

1. You can grill or fry the sausages as you like, but I prefer to bake mine at about 180C / Gas Mark 4 for 20 to 25 minutes. Any of the fat given off while cooking then gets used to fry the onions, both frugal and delicious!
2. While the sausages are cooking, heat a little olive oil or some of the fat which exudes from the sausages while cooking. Add the onions together with a generous pinch of salt. Fry for 15 to 20 minutes over a medium heat until beginning to caramelise. Make sure you check that the onions aren't burning!
3. Stir in the vinegar, mustard and honey and cook for a further 1 to 2 minutes.
4. Add generous dollops of  the honey-mustard onions over bread slices. Top with halved sausages and a drizzle of either ketchup or brown sauce.