Ye Olde Toad-in-the-Hole.

With Autumn fastening her chilly grip on our days the thought of something warm and comforting for dinner is needed. So luckily I came across this recipe in Saveur for Toad-in-the-Hole with onion gravy, a lovely combination of pork sausages wrapped in bacon and baked on top of a batter resulting in crispy browned Yorkshire Pudding and sizzling sausages. Perfect!

I did change the onion gravy a bit (you know who doesn’t eat beef -even in stock) and substituted streaky bacon  instead of Prosciutto to wrap half of the sausages, because well $1.00 for a slice of di Parma seemed a bit much for this dish and my current frugality. The bacon didn’t cling as well as the Prosciutto di Parma but that was okay because it rested on top of the sausages and Yorkshire pudding and got nice and crispy.

Onion Gravy with Chicken Stock

• One jumbo or two large yellow onions, thinly sliced
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 1 Tablespoon all purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1/3 cup Marsala wine
• 2 Tablespoons Tawny Port
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet Browning and Seasoning sauce*
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook the onions in the butter in a medium saucepan over medium low heat until they are golden, stir them often as they cook to prevent scorching. When they are caramelized to a medium golden brown, add the flour and cook for a minute or two just to coat the flour with fat and cook it a bit. Add the stock, wine and Worcestershire, bring to the boil and cook for  a few minutes until it starts to thicken a bit. Remove from heat and stir in the Kitchen Bouquet and taste. Add salt and pepper if needed.

*Kitchen Bouquet is a flavoring sauce that is made from caramelized vegetables and spices. It is available in most grocery stores in the U.S.A. You could probably use Vietnamese Caramel Sauce in its place.

I made our typical house salad with Parmesan, pine nuts and shallot-Dijon vinaigrette to accompany and that along with a nice glass of Cider was that! We snuggled under a blanket, warmed by comfort food

and watched Veronica Mars on DVD- highly recommended as a superior TV show but sadly cancelled before its time.