Beyond the barbecue
Celebrating the power and potential of the sausage, cooking for Nadia Lim and cookie butter by the spoonful.
Kia ora e te whānau. Nau mai haere mai ki The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Ko Simon Day ahau, stepping in for The Boil Up’s usual editor, Charlotte Muru-Lanning, who I’m hoping is in bed watching Big Night with a bowl of noodles.
Charlotte’s return to home detention reminded me of the essential lesson I learned during the first lockdown in 2020 – sausages are the most important staple in any good cook’s home. In the two years since that first lockdown I’ve always had a pack of sausages in the freezer in case we were suddenly trapped at home again. No matter what you’ve got in the fridge or pantry, a sausage is waiting to enhance the meal with its moreish goodness.
For thousands of years, sausages have been an important part of dozens of different cultures around the world for their ability to make use of all kinds of leftovers. Homer even slipped a tribute to some sizzling goat sausages into The Odyssey. And like all good food, they’ve become as political as they are delicious.
Sausages are deeply humble. Traditionally a way to make use of trimmings and offcuts, their fatty umami flavor hides behind their casings. But this humility has led to them being underrated and underestimated in New Zealand. For many years I felt like sausages had lost their vision and were not given an opportunity to flourish beyond the barbecue. However, there is a growing awareness and appreciation for their potential.
They’re beauty is in their versatility. They can (and should) be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They embrace the high and low cultural dichotomy that makes food exciting. I love all types of sausages whether it’s a duck and fennel sausage paired with tahini and red cabbage from Cazador, or a sausage sizzled outside Bunnings served on white bread with Watties. You can order a Cambridge duck sausage roll from the “treats” menu at Josh Emett’s fine-dining restaurant Onslow, and you can get one from the petrol station at 3am on your way home. Both will be delicious.
Sausages can be the hero of the meal, served with mash and gravy; shit, a “sausage sizzle” is an entire event in its own right. But their use goes far beyond frying on the barbecue. Use them as the soul of a stew in a cassoulet. Remove them from their casing, mix with beef mince and roll them up to create succulent meatballs where the fat visibly caramelises. Dot chunks of the sausage meat across your pizza. Use the meat from a pork sausage to make larb or a ragù. You can even chuck them into a boil up.
They’re the muse for intense innovation. Whether that’s injecting them with cheese like the infamous Sizzler (still delicious) or an award-winning remix of a traditional Swedish sausage with barley and spices.
Next time you’re at the butcher (my favourite sausages are made by Amanda Hellier from Farm Gate Produce who is at Auckland’s Parnell Farmers Market each Saturday morning), make sure you grab an extra pack of bangers for the freezer. You never know when you’ll next need their comfort.
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Weekly bites
Speaking of sausages: last week four Spinoff staff – including Charlotte and me – had our sizzling skills assessed by the three judges of the new series of Masterchef. Charlotte wrote about how the pressure of cooking for three famous chefs turned our low-stakes sausage competition into anxiety-fuelled chaos. It was heaps of fun and deeply stressful.
It was also undeniably compelling spending two hours with Nadia Lim after her unsolicited role in the very public reputational self immolation of rich-lister Simon Henry. Lim was funny and generous and fascinating and farms sheep and barley on 500ha in Central Otago when she’s not starring in TV shows. Kim Knight’s profile of Lim in the NZ Herald (paywalled) is an intimate vision into how she handled the Henry controversy, the way her mind works and her journey to growing her own food.
As the price of a 1kg block of cheese passed $20, the government this week announced it would clamp down on the supermarket duopoly and go beyond the Commerce Commission’s recommendations from earlier in the year to try to improve competition in the sector. Legislation will be passed to prevent land banking by the existing supermarkets that stops competition from setting up, and to demand Foodstuffs and Woolworths open their wholesale business to competitors. Unfortunately, suggestions that German discount supermarket Aldi was investigating New Zealand were unfounded and challenger brands were worried the proposal would give the pair more power.
In celebration of Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa (Sāmoan language week), The Spinoff’s Sela Jane Hopgood, with the help of West Auckland Sāmoan couple Shanice and Lima Sula, shared a recipe for a modern take on the traditional paifala, the half-moon pie. The Sāmoan dessert is like a puff pastry calzone (hence the half-moon nickname) stuffed with a sweet pineapple custard filling. Manaia tele!
Last week the Herald hilariously republished The Spinoff’s Stewart Sowman-Lund’s love letter to the original Coke. The joke comes four paragraphs in.
On Twitter, financial journalist Frances Cook waded into the dangerous territory of gas vs induction stovetop debate. “Really thought that tweeting about crypto would be what would set my mentions on fire, turned out to be my opinion that gas stove tops suck. I’m right though 💁🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️,” she tweeted.
Frances is definitely wrong (environmental and health concerns aside). Gas is the only way to cook. (Editor’s note: For indoor air quality reasons, please turn the range hood on and crank open a window when cooking with gas.)
Induction is too fast and too furious. In the kitchen you need to be able to do three things at the same time. Gas gives you control and a margin for error at the same time. I like to be able to put a pan on with a glug of oil while I chop the garlic and pour myself a wine. On an induction stove the oil is smoking before I can peel the first clove.
In the same way we eat with our eyes, I like to be able to see the fire I’m cooking with. Gas has the romance of open flame, a nostalgic symbol of how cooking over fire changed human evolution. Induction’s digital representation doesn’t speak to me in the same way as flames wrapping around the edge of a pan or gently flickering beneath a simmering pot does. There’s no flair or drama or flamboyance with induction. It makes cooking feel robotic.
(And you can’t do spots on an induction hob).
I consider myself a peanut butter connoisseur – a peanut butter nutter. If you’ve ever listened to The Spinoff’s dormant food podcast Dietary Requirements you’ll know my homemade white chocolate and miso peanut butter has been endorsed by Lorde.
New Zealand is blessed with a disproportionate number of independent peanut butter makers. By far my favourite is Fix and Fogg. I’ve currently got four different blends on the top shelf of the pantry and I find myself eating directly from the jar – especially the Everything Butter – far more than I actually spread it on anything. Fix and Fogg has just released its first non-nut-based product – Cookie Butter – and it’s irresistible. Be sure to hide it in the back of the pantry. Inspired by the Belgian speculoos cookie, the butter is spicy and aromatic and creamy and tastes just like the little windmill biscuits of my childhood. Get it where you can (it appears sold out almost everywhere right now) and put it on thick slices of fruit loaf, use it in your baking recipes, or just spoon it straight into your mouth.
Thank you for having me! It’s been a pleasure serving you a small slice of my food world.
I have a reputation for sharing photos of my twin boys in forums where it’s not entirely appropriate. So here’s a pic of Freddie endorsing the sponsor's product to close this week’s edition. The Boil Up will be back next week with Charlotte in charge.
