bake

No one is sure where the name "Toad in the Hole" comes from ("Toad in a Hole" is also used).

For the "hole", or batter:

• 4 oz plain white flour

• 2 small eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 10 fluid ounces milk

For the "toad" or sausage component:

• 4 100% pork sausages

Essentially, this dish is Yorkshire pudding with sausages in it.

Preheat the oven to 450F. Saute the sausages briefly in a pan to draw off excess fat (or you might grill them if you prefer). Save the fat. Cut the sausages into chunks.

This hearty entree is also known in Ireland as "sailor pie" or "sailor's pie" even though it contains no fish. Presumably it was thought of as being a good hearty dish suitable to give to a man who'd just come in from the sea.

Another version of this pie appears in a series of cookbooks produced by the government of the Irish Republic for young housewives in the 1930's. Because of this, the pie is sometimes known by the name of the then-Irish Taoiseach / prime minister, and referred to as "De Valera Pie."

The oldest versions of the dish use plain pastry or puff pastry tops for the pie. This one follows the newer tradition of using a soda bread crust.

The recipe...

Boxty is yet another of the numerous Irish foodstuffs that has poetry written about it. It would have been a mainstay of the home cook's repertoire, two hundred years ago, as a convenient and enjoyable way to use the ubiquitous potato. Boxty has some similarities to other European potato cake recipes, especially latkes.

Apparently Irish men were thought to like boxty a lot, since the most famous of the boxty poems says:

Boxty on the griddle,
boxty in the pan,
if you can't make boxty,
you'll never get a man.

(Your mileage may vary.)

Here's the recipe...