Of all the things that I've learned to do in a kitchen nothing has given me more pleasure than making sausages. The effort to enjoyment ratio is satisfyingly good and if you want to impress your friends, for sheer rarity value home-made sausage ranks high.
There are two kinds of sausage, those that are made to be cooked and eaten right away, and those that are intended for keeping, like salami. They are both made in the same way.The first thing that you'll need are the casings - the skins that will be stuffed with meat. Most butchers and supermarkets are happy to sell them. Don't be squeamish, they may look like pig guts but these days they are made from edible cellulose. Buy the widest casing that you can.

The hard part of the operation is getting the meat into the casing. It takes either a little ingenuity or a commercial sausage-making machine. Given the unlikelihood of the second, we'll go with the ingenuity. The principle is this: the casing is rolled onto the spout of a funnel like a large prophylactic and a knot is tied in the end. As the meat is pushed down the funnel it begins to fill the casing, pushing the casing off the spout of the funnel as it fills.

The simplest way to do this is to put a funnel into a large piping bag, fill the bag with the prepared meat and squeeze. I've tried this, and it takes the strength of Hercules. A Spong mincer with the cutting blades removed can also do the job. I fastened the funnel to the mincer with a jubilee clip and it worked. Using an electric mincer is a lot less work. Currently I'm using a modified silicon tube gun. If you've got a one-inch diameter casing, ideally you'll need a funnel with a one-inch diameter spout.

Assuming an ingenious solution is in place, start with pork sausages; pork is cheap, so if things go wrong it won't cost much. A casing is about five feet long and will hold about six pounds of meat. Cheap cuts are good for making sausages, like shoulder or belly. It will look as though there is a lot of fat, but that's only because you can see it. In a standard commercial sausage there's a lot more, you just can't see it - it's dyed and homogenized.

Mincing the meat for the sausages is quick but not as good as cutting it up small with a sharp knife. Take a large mixing bowl and cover the bottom with a layer of chopped meat. Sprinkle it with salt, ground black pepper and a little chilli powder. Add another layer of meat and season again. Continue until all the meat is in the bowl and then mix it together well - a splash of red wine will make it easier to push into the casing. As you do this keep a little pressure on the casing so that it won't slide off too quickly. Make sure that it's tightly packed and well filled. When you've done this you'll have a five-foot long stuffed tube. Take a length of string and gently tie off the tube about four inches from the starting end - casings do stretch, but a well-filled tube can burst unless you treat it gently. Tie the tube every four inches or so, to make the individual sausages. Hang them up in a dry, airy place for two days.

At this stage you can put them in a fridge or freezer, or cook them immediately, slicing them in half lengthways. Done on a griddle they're a real treat. If you're adventurous, put some aside and weigh them. Hang them up again and when they weigh half of the original weight - (after a couple of weeks) take them down and pack them into a jar, covering them with olive oil. These are salt-cured saucissons secs; they taste amazing and will keep forever under oil if you can refrain from eating them. When you do eat them, slice them thinly like salami.

If you can find an easy way to fill the casings, the variety of sausages you can make is bewildering. Some of my favourites include lamb sausages with fresh mint, venison (with one third pork) and juniper berries, beef sausages and mixed game sausages - your imagination is the only limit.