The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook - Dinah Bucholz [48]
Nothing says “Welcome home to Hogwarts” like sausage. You'll find sausages on the menu throughout the Potter books — most notably at the welcome feast that kicks off the new school year (see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 12). In that memorable scene, Dumbledore starts to announce the Triwizard Tournament — and is rudely interrupted by the bizarre-looking Professor Moody, who bursts into the Great Hall and without so much as a how-do-you-do helps himself to a sausage.
The Greeks didn't just run around naked throwing disks at each other, wearing laurel wreaths. They also ate sausages, as described in a comedy by Greek playwright Epicharmus brilliantly titled… The Sausage. Fifteen hundred years ago the Greeks figured out that you can use up and also preserve all the scraps of meats and unwanted parts of the animal by mixing it with a lot of salt and turning it into sausages. Sausages come in many shapes and forms, one of which is a fresh mixture of ground meat with a filler such as bread crumbs that is formed into patties or sausage shapes and fried.
½ pound ground veal
½ pound ground pork or beef
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground sage
1/8 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/8 teaspoon ground thyme
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
Combine all the ingredients except for the 2 tablespoons butter or margarine in a large mixing bowl and mix well.
Heat the butter or margarine in a skillet on a medium-high flame. Form the meat into sausage shapes and fry on each side, turning often, until the sausages are well browned.
Transfer the sausages to a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat until all the mixture is used up.
Serves 6
Fried Tomatoes
The morning after a harrowing encounter with the dementor on the Hogwarts Express, Harry restores his peace and good humor with a little help from his friends — and sausages and fried tomatoes for breakfast (see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 6).
Did you know that until the mid-1700s the British thought tomatoes were poisonous? They weren't far off the mark, though. Tomatoes are indeed related to the deadly nightshade, and the stems and leaves of the tomato plant do contain toxins. So when the tomato came to England in the late 1500s, it was cultivated as an unusual plant to look at. Thank goodness, someone finally figured out that we can eat them, and they began to appear in cookbooks in the 1700s.
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium-size red ripe tomatoes, sliced into ¼-inch slices
Flour for dredging
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Hot buttered toast, for servin
Heat the oil in a skillet on a medium-high flame.
Dredge the tomatoes in the flour and fry them on both sides until they are golden.
Transfer the tomatoes to a paper-towel-lined plate and sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Serve immediately with hot buttered toast.
Serves 4
English Farmhouse Scrambled Eggs and Bacon
Gilderoy Lockhart can't seem to stop embarrassing Harry, whether it's before the start of term or the first day of classes, when eggs and bacon are served for breakfast in the Great Hall (see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 6). Poor Harry, the forced breakfast chef at the Durs-leys', also serves bacon and eggs on Dudley's birthday after being warned he'd better not burn it (see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 2).
Who doesn't enjoy eggs with bacon on a weekend morning when there's actually time to make it and eat it? Feel like you're at home with Harry with this centuries-old breakfast classic. Throw in fried tomatoes with toast and a bowl of porridge to pretend you're eating the traditional English breakfast, which contains too much food for normal people to eat even occasionally.
2 slices bacon, diced
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon milk or heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 ounce English Cheddar cheese, shredde
Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the