Toad in the Hole

October rain on the kitchen window and the oven ticking as it heats. That's when this dish belongs. Toad in the hole is one of those meals that sounds like a joke and eats like a blessing: good sausages sunk into Yorkshire pudding batter and baked until the whole thing puffs up, golden and crisp at the edges, soft and savoury underneath where the batter has caught the fat.

The name is absurd. Nobody knows where it came from and I've stopped caring. What matters is the cooking, and the cooking is simple if you respect the two things it asks of you: a batter that's had time to rest, and fat that's had time to get properly, furiously hot. That's it. That's the whole secret. Everything else is just sausages in a tin.

I make this when the evenings draw in and the kitchen needs filling with the smell of something solid and good. There are few better feelings than pulling the tin from the oven, puffed and bronzed, and putting it straight on the table in front of someone whose shoulders drop half an inch at the sight of it. Onion gravy over the lot. Greens on the side. We're only making dinner.

Get the best sausages you can. This is the place where it matters most. A good butcher's sausage with a high meat content and a proper seasoning will repay you. Supermarket value sausages leak water into the batter and the whole thing weeps. The sausages carry the dish. Spend accordingly.