"bangers" news and stories

Sometimes you've just got to be crafty. I'm having a bit of a packed freezer crisis right now, and have no room for the increasingly stale flagels and bagels I bought last week. I wanted sausage, but not a sandwich. Thus Bangers and Flagels was born.

Think panzanella of the bangers and mash variety. Feeling too lazy to mash potatoes, I left that off and simply fried up a sausage, then some onions and mushrooms. (While I toasted up flagel chunks in the toaster oven.) When the mushrooms and onions were cooked to my liking, I sprinkled in some flour, mixed everything well, then poured in about a half a bottle of beer and some flavoring (like mustard). As the impromptu gravy began to thicken, I tossed in the flagels and let it all sit for a few minutes.

The beer can be subbed with the wine, booze, or liquid of your choice -- just keep in mind that the flavor remains in this dish, so don't cook with something you're only looking to get rid of.

Although the results of the 12th annual Great New Zealand Sausage Competition won't be in until later this week, the most interesting thing about the judging isn't finding out who the winner is (unless you were participating, of course) but who was doing the judging in the first place. In addition to the Beef, Pork, BBQ, Flavored, Flavored BBQ, Saveloy/Polony/Cocktail, Traditional, International, and Gourmet categories that were evaluated by experienced judges, there was also a second judging of a selected group of entries to see who would win the Kids' Choice Award. All the entries, selected from those participating in other categories in the competition, were scrutinized by two groups of kids: seven judges under the age of five, and a group under the age of nine.

Perhaps some will bristle at the idea of their product being judged by kids, but most children love sausages and while they may not be able to pick out the same points as a life-long professional food critic would, they certainly know the difference between a good one and a bad one.

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