Kitchen Experiments: Turkish Sausage on Toast

To quote legendary director Hrishikesh Mukherjee's movie 'Bbawarchi',
"It is so simple to be happy,
But so difficult to be simple..."

This is especially true in the kitchen - ever so often, we surrender to the temptation of "just a pinch of garam masala" or "just a spoonful of soy sauce" to "liven things up" that we end up with a mish mash of tastes and flavours and totally lose sight of the essentials of a dish. Perhaps we are afraid of an insipid, bland dish (dis)gracing our table.

But when done right, a simple dish is a joy forever. I added one such dish to my repertoire over the weekend - Turkish sausage on toast.

A recent holiday in Turkey yielded a packet of soujouk (sucuk in Turkish) - spicy Turkish sausage, similar to chorizo.


All it took was some tomato, onion and Parmesan cheese to rustle up a superhit starter or a quick meal for one!

Turkish Sausage on Toast:

Ingredients:
Turkish Sausage, or any spicy sausage
Spanish onion, sliced lengthwise
Tomato, sliced
Parmesan cheese- grated or powdered (you can use slices/powder/spread of any cheese you like
Sriracha Chilly Sauce ( or any spicy sauce)
Sliced bread

Method:
Add a teeny bit of oil in a frying pan, swirl it around and place on low heat. Add the sausage(s) and cook till done, i.e. the skin looks about to burst.

Slice the sausage into 0.5 cm thick slices, keep aside.

While the sausage is cooking, slice the tomato and onion, and grate the cheese.

Spread the cheese over the bread, and top with onion and tomato.

Dot with chilly sauce

Add the sausage slices on top. You can add another layer of cheese, if you wish. :)

Grill on a hot griddle (with a lid) or in the oven, till the bread is toasted to crunchy perfection.

You can top the open sandwich with another slice of sauce-smeared bread and grill in the sandwich toaster too.

Enjoy piping hot. Tomato ketchup is an optional condiment, but is not really needed.

PS: For a more dainty take on the dish, to present it as a starter, use canape cases or mini tart shells instead of bread. Upping the ante would be using puff pastry - press down small rounds of pastry dough into mini muffin cups, spoon in the filling and bake in a hot oven till pastry becomes golden and puffy. Bliss!

PPS: In retrospect, this dish is not really original, but is more like a vampish cousin of the bland American hotdog. But what the heck, its quick, tasty, and filling. All boxes ticked for a recipe worth repeating! :)