Florida 2024

 The Sunshine State plays home to this week's Formula 1.

We set out searching the internet for 'savoury snacks from Florida' but mostly, as might have been expected, only found commercialised brands of heavily artificial foods stuffs. Heidi came good with the discovery of corndogs, but even they were too artificial to suit a home-baked challenge, so we modified the recipe into something more appealing.

As a snack that you might pick up on the side of a high street or half-time break at a sports game, these are no doubt, factory-produced reconstituted 'meat' in highly processed batter mix, air fried and then microwaved back to warmth. But not so for us...

Firstly, we used real sausages, not the hipster expensive type from the top shelf, but those which had some proportion of pork and satisfy most people. Of course, unlike frankfurters for which the recipe was designed, our sausages were raw meat, so step one we had to add, was cooking them.

With a coating recipe that probably came from someone's great grandma in the deep south, we had to assemble a sweet batter mix and then add fresh sweet corn from the cob. The mixture wasn't keen on holding to sausages so it required a quick scoop before dropping into the fryer and then dodging the spray of hot fat coming back at us.

A salad thrown together on the side and a drizzle (probably too much so) of mustard and ketchup completed the serving. 

As is becoming almost predictable, Heidi and I thought this another success, while Sian and Tally found reason to object (or just pick off the batter and eat the sausage on a stick).

Skewer the sausages

Baked, to cook through without giving a crispy outside

Assembly. Note the cute Russian doll cup measures 

Encourage the mixture to befriend the sausage and then deep fry

For the first time this year, we get to eat outside!

Recipe

Translated to English for you from the other side of the pond - though I'm content to retain cup measurements on this occasion, because our weighing scales decided this week to give up :(.

Ingredients

4 regular pork sausages

1/2 cup cornflour

1/4 cup plain flour

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 tablespoon (or shake until you think that's about right) all-purpose seasoning - a little to my surprise we could find this in Sainsbury's  - but if you can't, just make up some salt, herbs and MSG mixture.

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon (does anyone actually have this measure?) baking soda

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1 cup (about 1 1/2 cobs) of sweetcorn, cut from the cob just before using it

1 litre of vegetable oil for frying

Method

1. Skewer the sausages and bake at gas mark 5 for around 20 mins, turning over mid-way. It's odd not to cook the sausages with any colour on the surface, but I think the crispy texture on the outside would be strange when it's got the batter over it - so go for the almost anemic look.
2. Start heating the frying fat. If you are really swish you can use a thermometer, but it mostly meant that I had to keep turning the gas up and then back down. 
3. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a bowl
4. Add the wet ingredients and whisk until smooth - Somehow Heidi's cooking experience prior to this must have missed out on whisking anything, she attempted to do it with a metal spoon, and then an egg whisk, before I had to direct her.
5. Cut the corn of the cobs and add to the mixture.
6. One by one, coat the sausages in the batter mix, attempt to keep them together, and place them into the fat. 
7. Before it looks too burnt, guess that the batter might have cooked through and remove. Drain and allow to partially cool before eating.

Success; I didn't make anyone eat raw sausages

If you're interested, though I suspect you're not, the salad consisted of:

• white cabbage
• yellow pepper
• baby beetroot, cooked in light vinegar
• avocado
• spring onion
• fresh parsley
• dressing: olive oil, honey, salt

I was trying to keep it reasonable for everyone, but there was at least one thing that each of the others could stick their tongues out at. Perhaps, I should have just made it for myself anyway.