Hands up who gave up something in January – booze, carbs, meat, all hope of making it to payday with money in your pocket? Yep, we know the feeling too. The food industry is a forever moving landscape of new trends, and old ones re-visited, and whilst this no doubt makes for exciting menus, we like some stability too. We’re here to champion Calorie Free Fridays. Doesn’t matter what you eat today, the calories just don’t count on any diet plan – each and every glorious morsel of Friday food is calorie free. It goes on all day too, at least until it gets dark anyway.
Our building is serviced by at least 2 mobile food wagons a day, and they are well supported by us. Left your lunch in the fridge at home? No problems, there’s mobile food to bail you out! £4.50 gets you a sausage baguette. How much??
Well, not today. I’m lucky enough to have access to a decent butcher, so what better than proper sausage rolls for the whole gang? I’ll throw in some fried onions as well, and I’ve found some button mushrooms in the fridge that could do with using up. Perfect. The key to this operation is pre-cooking everything on Thursday night, as cooking facilities are limited. Always plan and work to the capabilities of your kitchen.
First, here’s a price breakdown. 79p per completed roll. BARGAIN. Let’s have 2 each at that price.
Instead of sealing the sausages in a frying pan first, I put the whole lot in the oven – it takes the same time to cook 1 as it does 20, so why not? 180 deg or so, turn every 10 mins until browned off and roasting hot in the middle. The only tray big enough is my Oven Roaster and they fit just perfect. These are Sausage 6’s (6 to the lb) so bigger than the breakfast 8’s on that daily chuck wagon. If you are serving everything there and then, you can always turn the oven down to 100 deg, and the sausages will sit at a holding temperature until needed. (Put them on the bottom shelf)
Onions: Peel, Halve, Slice. Put the unused bits in a Compostable Bin Bag. Melt a decent lump of butter, add the onions and stir so nothing sticks. I added sugar as this helps caramelise everything, and it takes AGES.
So, once its all cooked, set everything aside to cool and refrigerate. The onions and mushrooms (fried in a little butter) are in our 12oz Bio Soup Containers ready for the microwave in the morning.
This morning, it was all pretty straight forward. 10 sausages for the warehouse, microwaved in one half of a Biodegradable Square Meal Box. (The lid is perforated!) These trays don’t leech oil or grease and are sturdy enough to be microwaved for at least 5 mins. I served it on 9″ Biodegradable plates, and the mess was mopped up with a Recycled Napkin so washing up today was minimal (not that I was going to do it, I cooked after all and thems the rules)
The proof of the pudding as they say is in the eating, and what’s left over. It went strangely quiet for a bit, and let me tell you, the only thing left was a mushroom. I’ll take that.
Kate 🙂
