The Italian "Toastog"

The Discovery:  The Italiano sausage with...?

I'll call it an invention though it's just a combination of food that already exist. But I feel like it is an upgrade, and it did surprised me when I first discover the combination. It still felt like an indulgence the second time I had it. 

We were there to help one of my friends to move his belongings to storage as he  needed to eradicate the dorm in 2 days. After full two days of muscle work, we ended up having our own pantry and fridge stuffed up by a bunch of food from their need-to-be-emptied fridge and pantry. And there goes Italian sausage, a pack of five, was in the freezer group. We did not pay too much attention to it initially cause we never bought Italian sausage, and we mostly go for bratwurst instead. We always looked to other things first cause were uncertain how to deal with it. Things were quickly consumed up as we were six times the army he was. 

That fateful day came when it was the thing that interested me the most among the things left. Well, it shouldn't be too different from bratwurst, right? And I was starving. I hope it is not to your surprise but the most common way that sausages are treated here in our house was being made into hotdogs. Whenever we buy our bratwurst, we buy our hotdog bun. But that day, we had nothing. Then I considered, what about the toasts?

I did not take pictures then, so the one you see now is the pan fried bun version. The one before was the oven-baked toast version. Pan fried bun was soft and airy, and the shape was easier to bite; oven-baked toast was more crispy, but you need to figure your way out to take a perfect bite. 

What's new? The Egg Salad!

Remember to mix the egg white chunks into the mixture in the end :)
I like that I can eat the egg whites, but if you don't mind, you can just mix them all at once.

The secret is here. I mean adding it to the hotdog. For the recipe for egg salad, I believe lots of people have their own version of it, and these are all great! If you doesn't have any you can have mine:

(4 servings)

• half a russet potato, steamed/cooked, mash into mashed potato (adds to volume and texture)
• 4 eggs, hard boil them (it says 12 minutes online. Put them in a boiling pot gently, best with a spoon), mix the yolks with the mashed potato, cut the egg whites into chunks and set it aside
• KEWPIE mayo, or any other brand of mayo (adds to richness and smoothness)
• a spoon of greek yogurt (perfect if you want to increase smoothness but not richness)
• Ground black pepper, whatever amount you like

Demand for smell: The Garlic Butter Mix

It's most likely to look like this.
It has its slight orange because of the Italian seasoning

With these components, altering the proportions of each of them, you can get it to do different job. If you want to make garlic bread, add more garlic and some salt in it; if you wanna make it a roast chicken glaze, add more sugar in it; if you are to make upgrade hotdog bun, then you don't have to change anything, just do the following:

(4 servings)

• 4 tbsp (about half a stick) unsalted butter, microwave for 30 sec until half melt
• 4 cloves of garlic, crushed and roughly minced
• 2 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp lemon/lime juice
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp rosemary
• a pinch of salt if you want to

mix them well in a bowl, and spread the mixture on the inside of hotdog buns. (I wouldn't add too much salt to the mixture as the sausage should be pretty salty already. But sometimes adding some salt seems to do magic, so why not adding a pinch? :)

The meaty interior: The Italian Sausage

Nothing special about this part. Add a little water (to the 1/4 of the sausage?) Cook with lid on until all water evaporates, and continue to brown the sausage with its oil or the garlic butter made earlier without a lid.

The Combination: I call it "Toastog"

I feel it sort of inappropriate if I call it Italian cause it is actually just because of the Italian sausage. It is not the authentic Toast-og as I used hotdog bun here, but I promise that it blew my mind when I first used the oven-baked toast (of course with the garlic butter as well). To be honest, the panfried hotdog bun appeared to be not as impressive, but it was still very good! Next time I would probably try baking the bun, so it will have all the good features in it.