Last year, I helped the Welsh government set up a food sustainability toolkit for home cooks and food industry professionals alike. You can access it for free, and it’s full of tips to help reduce food waste, packaging and energy use in the kitchen. The website is also a great resource for sustainable Welsh-inspired recipes, including fish-scrap croquettes and today’s Glamorgan sausages, which are a great way to use up stale bread. However, I’ve adapted the traditional recipe to use up not only stale bread but also dark-green leek tops and aquafaba, which acts as a binding agent instead of the usual eggs and milk, so cutting costs and saving waste. Glamorgan sausages are very simple to make and are a great vegetarian option for breakfast or supper; I tend always to make a few extra for the next day.
Glamorgan sausages
These fried vegetarian sausages are one of my favourite veggie options for breakfast. I often make a speedy version and don’t bother coating them in breadcrumbs, but if you have time and spare breadcrumbs, it is well worth giving your Glamorgan sausages a breadcrumb coating to guarantee a golden crust. To do this, pour about 60ml aquafaba into one bowl and put about 50g breadcrumbs in another. Gently roll a sausage at a time into the aquafaba, shake off any excess, then roll in the breadcrumbs to coat.
Glamorgan sausages are traditionally made with caerphilly, but other cheeses such as cheddar, hard goat’s cheese and even mozzarella all work really well, too. The leek tops can also be swapped out for other finely chopped ingredients such as red onions, leafy greens or and other herbs.
Makes 8 sausages
120g stale bread
60g caerphilly, or other cheese (see recipe introduction)
90g aquafaba
1 tsp English mustard
60g dark-green leek tops, finely shredded, washed and dried
10g parsley sprigs, finely chopped (including the stalks)
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, or other oil, for frying
Pulse the bread in a food processor to make breadcrumbs. Add the cheese, aquafaba, mustard, leek tops and parsley, then season and pulse again until the mixture comes together into a moist but firm mass that’s easy to shape into balls; if need be, add a little extra aquafaba or breadcrumbs to get it to the right consistency. Divide into four balls, then roll each one into a sausage.
Put the oil in a frying pan on a medium-low heat – keep an eye on it to make sure the oil doesn’t smoke. Once hot, gently fry the sausages on one side without moving them, until golden brown underneath, then turn and repeat on the other side.
