BACON-WRAPPED CHIPOLATAS

It’s embarrassing – or should be, though happily I don’t believe in feeling ashamed of anything I eat – but I used to be a little sneery about bacon-wrapped chipolatas. How foolish one can be. They are now a must-have. I make life easy for myself by cooking them early – about an hour or two in advance – and then covering with foil (in the main to stop marauders, and I include myself here as they are dangerously pickable) and reheating at the last minute in a very hot oven, such as the one the potatoes will be roasting in later.

Cooking 50 of them may seem over the top, but these get snaffled up (especially by children) faster and more greedily than you could believe.

Serves 10-16 as part of the Christmas feast, or 8-10 if not

25 thin rashers of streaky bacon, or 50 very thin slices of pancetta

50 cocktail sausages or small chipolatas

3tbsp vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/ gas 6; though if I’m doing this much earlier and don’t need the oven at this temperature anyway, I cook them for 40-45 minutes at 180°C/fan 160°C/gas 4.

Make sure your bacon or pancetta is thin enough to be unbulkily pliable (pancetta is thinner sliced, but it generally costs a lot more) and if not, roll out to make thinner. Cut each rasher of bacon in half vertically. Wrap each half-slice of bacon or slice of pancetta round each cocktail sausage; there’s no need to firm with a cocktail stick, as I’ve never had any unravelling. The bacon, when thin, seems to get sticky and adheres dutifully to its sausage.

Spoon the oil into a roasting tin and arrange the sausages, with the end bit of bacon down, and roast for 30 minutes, until the bacon is crisp and the sausages cooked. The only way to be sure is to make the ultimate sacrifice and taste one.

Take out of the oven and wrap the tin in foil. If you’ve let them burn a little, it may be better to remove them to a large piece of foil and wrap them in a loose but tightly sealed package; or the sausages will continue to fry in the tin. When you are almost ready to eat, reheat the sausages by posting the foilwrapped tin or parcel into a hot oven for 10 minutes. Or, cook from scratch 45 minutes before you need them.