While we might not wish to know too much detail about the body parts encased in those thin casings, who would turn up their nose at a great sausage — be it that noble South African delicacy the boerewors, a humble British banger, a Spanish chorizo or a German bratwurst, weisswurst, blutwurst or bockwurst?However, it takes a special kind of fanatic to write a whole cookbook based on sausages.The son of a well-regarded British wine writer, Max Halley’s previous cookbooks have provided tons of ideas for jazzing up sandwiches, and it was brave of him to have turned his attention to the world of sausages in Cooking with Sausages. It is not the wurst idea I have come across.“Something has long been needed to help the reputation of the sausage. Cheap, versatile and utterly delicious when made and cooked with care, they are one of God’s gifts to gastronomy. This book is my sausage manifesto — an ode to a woefully underrated and much-maligned ingredient,” Halley enthuses.“Maligned for so long, it is time we stand together, shout ‘sausage!’ from the rooftops, use and buy them when we might previously not have, and fight for a world where they are made with more care and better things. The time for change is now. Let this be the dawning of a new day — the sausages deserve it, and so do we.”We are probably all well acquainted with that supper staple bangers and mash, but Halley presents us with quite a range of other ideas for sausage-based cuisine, from the laughably simple to the annoyingly complex.Like all good soccer matches, this is a book of two parts. It starts with a varied collection of recipes using intact sausages, and then we have an array of ideas for what to do with the sausage filling if it is squeezed out and the casings are discarded. (This unrobing process works well with most but not all sausages. One pack I tried turned out to be a nightmare to unsheathe.)‘Cooking with Sausages’ by Max Halley. Picture: (Supplied) Halley is unapologetic about evicting the contents of a sausage for use as a main ingredient, as he believes that a lot of care would have gone into preparing the stuffing.“How has it gone unnoticed for so long that sausages are just pre-seasoned minced (ground) meat?” he writes.“Ah, sweet mysteries of life! Literally anything made with mince, of any kind, can be made with sausages freed from their skins. In fact, to make a bold claim, bearing in mind the seasonings and unexpected things that great sausage makers stuff into their skins, sausages often make better dishes than boring old mince.”Of course, the proof of any pudding is in the eating (though black pudding is not my favourite kind of sausage), so I did test-fry a few of his recipes to see whether Hally is right to be such a silly sausage worshipper.First off was possibly the simplest recipe in the book, for a basic hot dog, or as the author entitles it: “Cheapest shop-bought everything hot dogs and the joys they bring”.He explains these are the everyday hot dogs that busy parents can enjoy, as “from start to finish, you can make 10 of these in 10 minutes”.And jolly good they were, too. Basic hot dog Vienna or bratwurst sausages are placed in an elongated roll, with ketchup, mustard, thinly diced onions and chopped jalapeños. It is a very simple recipe, but one to which I will return, maybe reducing the quantities of sauces and chopped fillings to make it slightly more elegant to eat.If boerewors is your thing, then use that instead, and maybe hunt elsewhere in the book for the recipe for long-fried onions. These are such a brilliant addition to a sausage-in-a-roll snack, and, to my mind, they are easier digested than the suggested raw onions. I admit the slow cooking of onions might not work if you are in a rush, and the process can be a bit tedious, but the results can be delicious.Next on my list for sausage suppers was a side dish: the “smoked sausage potato salad with sauce gribiche”.It was very filling, tasty but not exceptional, and went well with a simple pork chop. However, it was quite a lot of work to pull together. I prefer the meaty German potato salads I have scoffed in the past, using bacon instead of sausage. This is not a recipe to which I will be returning.The final dish I tried — “hungover sausage pasta” — uses sausage meat squeezed from its casing. It is very heavy on the garlic — using up to two bulbs of the stuff — so this dish not only supposedly banishes hangovers but is handy if there are any vampires in the neighbourhood.It was a fairly simple dish to rustle up and was tasty enough. However, there are many better sausage-based pasta dishes, so I am a bit puzzled at the author’s uninhibited enthusiasm for this one. Maybe I should try it with a real hangover next time to see whether there are also any medical benefits?In truth, I shall probably stick with my favourite sausage and pasta dish, Nigel Slater’s magnificent and moreish pasta with sausage, basil and mustard. This recipe can be found on the US Food & Wine magazine’s website and features in that publication’s best-ever 40 recipes. It doesn’t work on hangovers or vampires but is a recipe to treasure.Cooking with Sausages is far from the worst cookbook I have reviewed, but I am not sure it is one to which I will choose to return. There are many excellent recipes for using sausages in different and novel ways, but the ones Halley has chosen seem to lack sufficient sizzle.Business Day