The Sausage Trilogy part III: Katzenjammers

Concluding the BV silly sausage season, I thought it might be an idea to let the professionals take the reins and review a place that specialises in all things sausagey.

Of course, there aren't really all that many sausage-oriented restaurants around, but one bold exception is Katzenjammers, a German bierkeller close to London Bridge station where you can drink authentic Bavarian beers and enjoy a range of traditional sausages from the region.

Located down a fairly steep flight of steps from Southwark street's Hop Exchange - in what may or may not have once been the site of the legendary Becky's Dive Bar - Katzenjammers is owned by the chaps who run the New Wheatsheaf pub next door, and while the basement look and feel is similar to the 'Sheaf, what's on offer is very, very different.

With long wooden benches and continentally-accented bar staff dressed in Lederhosen (they may technically be Eastern European rather than German but it doesn't shatter the illusion) it does capture the bierkeller atmosphere, and you can even order your beer in litre steins.

One thing that isn't typically German is the lack of table service - you order from the bar, and about half the customers seem to just be in there for a few beers.

When life gives you sausages...

'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade', goes the ancient proverb (which isn't actually all that ancient).

But what if you've just conducted a mammothian sausage taste test and your lemonless life has actually given you a fridge full of sausages?

You make a delicious sausage casserole, that's what. Here's the recipe. It's piss-easy.

Bangin' Bangers - Supermarket sausages taste-tested

When I was a child, Bonfire Night - or Firework Night, as we called it - was my absolute favouritest night of the year.

Better than my birthday, better than Christmas. Better than that day I found all that porn on Mitcham Common.

We didn't have a bonfire and we didn't go in for any of that 'penny for the guy' twattery. But what we did have was fireworks. Not on some common land with hundreds of other people, but our own fireworks in our own garden. Bang.

As soon as they hit the shops, I'd spend all my pocket money and any other cash I could beg, borrow or blag on the biggest, best fireworks I could buy. Then, when the big night came, my brother and I would line them all up, carefully arranging the 'display' in order, with the sparklers first and the biggest fireworks saved until the end.

The post-fireworks meal was always the same too. Sausages. Usually with baked beans and a jacket potato, properly baked in the oven with a thick, blistery skin and loads of butter. Good times.

Cider-pig, Cider-pig

I'm as guilty as anybody of maintaining cider's second-class citizenship as a poor relation to beer.

Pork belly in cider

Don't get me wrong. I like cider a lot and, as other beer writers have noted, it has a stronger claim to being our national drink than ale.

But how often do I write about the stuff? About as often as I put pen to paper on the subject of vegan wholefoods and legumes. Which isn't often, obviously.

At the pub I'll only even look at the ciders available when I've made absolutely fucking damn sure that there are no beers that I want. Even then, if I'm honest, it's more likely that I've already walked out, leaving a Ben-shaped cloud of dust for the cartoon landlord to gently prod into disintegratatedness.

And while beer recipes have been hot fodder for a while now, cider recipes are still a bit thin on the ground.

So, what with it being Autumn'n'shit, it's probably a good time to share a seasonal, cidery recipe with you good people. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive dish that really highlights the relationship betwixt butchered pig and fermented apple.

All my trials soon be over

'You'll be sitting around for hours', 'you'll get sent home early and told not to come back', 'You'll probably just do a one-day trial and that'll be it'...

Pretty much everything that people told me about jury service turned out not to be true. And that's probably for the best.

I started at Woolwich Crown Court last Monday (an absolute cuntbugger of a place to get to, by the way!) and I'm now well into my third case. It's been more or less non-stop and really rather interesting - both the trials themselves and the fascinating insights into the machinations of our flawed but strangely effective legal system.

Truth is, serving on a jury has been an ambition of mine since I was a child, and it's been at least as fulfilling an experience as I'd hoped for, if not moreso.

(I still want to release a single that makes the lower reaches of the charts, I still want to win a parliamentary seat, and I still want to race an Opel Monza against a Ford Granada coupe while listening to Queen, but at least I can tick jury service off the list now!)

The sad (but philosophically necessary) reality is that the more ambitious ambitions are, the more likely they will go forever unfulfilled, but while I'm on a role and still relatively young, it would be nice to try and fulfil some of my foody, drinky ambitions.

That's got to be easier than the Monza-Granada-Queen race, right?

Flap-Jack-Jock-Beef-Cock

Like 45% of the people in Scotland I was disappointed with the referendum result, even though it panned out exactly as I predicted.

Not because I'm a Nationalistic Scot or have any kind of Nationalistic Scottish interests, but because I care rather more passionately than most about answering the West Lothian Question and the unfairness that is the Barnett Formula. Independence for Scotland would have provided a clean and fair resolution to these issues and left the Jocks to do their own thing without impacting unreasonably on the rest of us.

For that reason I was staunchly and unashamedly in the 'vote YES and FUCK OFF' camp. I'm surprised there weren't more of us really. (Not that we got a vote.)

Good news according to Ben

For much of the last few weeks, I've been lain low by the disease of kings. If you want an idea of how excruciating the pain in and around my left ankle has been, I actually went ten whole days without a drink at one point. Seriously. Ten!

It's an insufferable tease too, this gouty fucker. Just when I think it's getting better and I can return to enjoying my usual hearty quantities of ale and meat, the bloody pain strikes again and I'm back spending days on end sat indoors on a diet of low-purine food and Naproxen.

However - and I'm probably setting myself up for another uric fail here - it does finally seem to have subsided somewhat, allowing a pain-free me to focus on some of the really rather good stuff that's been happening lately.

And indeed, to share these good times with my readers.