New improved octopus balls, and sausages with lentils!

When you sit down and think about it…

“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”

John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

…which is why I took the bold move of altering my “modes of thought” for the production of takoyaki (octopus balls) and my rather yummy sausage with puy lentils dish.

I will leave you to debate whether this will lead to any improvements in “the lot of mankind” (I am too humble and modest to judge such things), but feast your eyes on these bad-boys and tell me they’re not tasty…

Toulouse Sausages with Puy Lentils

Stuck to a more French feel with the sausages this time going with some lovely smoked Toulouse sausages from the butchers and a monstrous glug of red wine, but also chucked in some finely chopped chestnut mushrooms and sweet romano peppers…

 

Takoyaki (octopus balls)

Last weeks balls were very tasty, but this weeks balls were balls that would be hard to beat!

Nothing much different in the recipe, perhaps the pan was now a bit more used to be using, or it could have been to do with the gas for the camping stove running out and having to make them on the stove rather than in the middle of table, but either way, tell me these are some of the tastiest balls you’ve ever seen…

 

Takoyaki (octopus ball) experiment

If you’ve never had takoyaki they are delicious!  Yes, I know the idea of octopus balls may sound a little icky, but trust be on this one, they are wonderful.

Unfortunately, much as I love them I am not fit to make takoyaki within a millions miles of this artist…

…tell me you’re not impressed by that!

Anyway, a friend recently gave us an old takoyaki pan so we decided to give it a clean and give it a try…with my 7-year old standing in for the takoyaki master.  Unfortunately we had no beni shoga (pickled ginger) or katsuobushi (bonito flakes), but that wasn’t going to stop us once we were armed with our octopus and had made the batter…

…first task was oiling said paid and getting it up to the required temperature so we could pop in the batter, then add those cheeky little pieces of octopus…

                         

…was you’ve got it hot enough and it looks as though the underside is cooked…

…the only think left to do was to flick them over (unfortunately not with the dexterity of the chap above), but still we did manage to keep the balls moving sufficiently that they ended up looking like this…

…which wasn’t bad for a first real effort from a 7-year old…so we popped them on the plate gave them a covering our sauce and crushed nori (in place of katsuobushi) and hey presto…

    

…luckily, we had enough batter and octopus for 4 batches, so everyone got more than enough!