Spicy Sausage Patties with Lettuce Wraps (and all sorts)

These spicy sausage patties are great as little picky things to go alongside a drink. They've got nice kick to them that keeps you wanting for more. Serve with all sorts of condiments and you can create different variations of parcels. Lettuce, sour cream and cool salsa for a Tex-Mex twist; or Chinese-peking-duck-inspired route with hoisin sauce, spring onions and cucumber. I couldn't decide, so I had both. Yum!

Anyway, lent season starts in less than a week time. This year I plan to give up meat entirely and until few days ago I thought I can do that. But as I was eating these little bundles of goodness, I started to doubt myself. A recent survey among work colleagues, so far most people said that I shall fail, one laughed out loud about the idea of me giving up meat and one person said that I might fail (that one person is me). Interesting...

One last thing, an important note to self: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT under any circumstances, go to the toilet after chopping chillis without washing your hands... I cannot believe this happened... again.

Spicy Sausage Patties with Lettuce Wraps
Recipe by Nigella Lawson
Makes 16 patties

400 g good quality sausages or sausage meat
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 green chilli, de-seeded and chopped
1 red chilli, de-seeded and chopped
2 teaspoons English mustard
1 garlic clove, peeled and grated
Zest of 1 lemon
2 thin or 1 fat spring onion, finely sliced
2 teaspoons chopped fresh coriander
1 x 15 ml tablespoon vegetable oil

to serve:
leaves from iceberg, escarole or little gem lettuces
pitta breads or flat breads, warmed
limes, cut into wedges

Squeeze the sausage meat out of the casings into a bowl, and then add the ginger, chillis, mustard, garlic, lemon zest, spring onion and coriander.

Mix everything together thoroughly and then make small patties roughly a walnut sized amount and shape it into a fat, little disc.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the patties over a medium heat for about 3 minutes a side or until properly cooked through.

Transfer to a platter and arrange the lettuce leaves, flat breads and anything else you want to eat with them.