I was in Asda recently getting something for my dinner, and as I walked past the cooked meat cabinet, I noticed a new product line: Berlinki Classic Hot Dog Sausages. I’m the author of There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s crisis is America’s, Too, and Screw the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Pleasant, Middle-Class Gated Community in Delhi. After a few seconds of chewing something didn’t seem right. It wasn’t becoming more… chewed. So, I spit the mouthful out – it was still quite unchewed in comparison to the way these things usually are at this stage. I then realised that the bloody sausages are also individually wrapped – and I mean tightly – in a plastic skin! You need a pair of scissors to snip into it, then you can peel it off – it’s like a condom on the damned things! Minimum life based on 'use-by' date of product. Average life based on last week's deliveries. Life guarantee shown based on delivery tomorrow with the Life guarantee starting the following day. I’m a contributor to Ricochet, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a Manhattan Institute scholar.

Someone found the blog on that search term. Well, they’re already cooked and you only need to reheat them. The best way is to put them in a small amount of boiling water (salted if you prefer) – take that plastic off first – for a few minutes to let them heat through. This is the same for all the Frankfurter-type hot dog sausages you buy in jars or tins (in brine). In fact, for these use the brine they’re in, boil it, then put the sausages in it for a few minutes. Before returning to Paris, I lived for a decade in Istanbul, where among other things I was the American Foreign Policy Council’s senior fellow for Turkey. (I also wrote part of a graphic novel about my seven cats called Catstantinople.) I’m now working on a crowdfunded, multimedia book project about Europe in the age of Trump called Brave Old World: Europe in the Age of Trump Please contribute to it! The project is entirely reader-funded. I appreciate even teeny-tiny donations: If you can only give a little bit, be assured that I’ll hugely appreciate it. I’m an American novelist, essayist, journalist, historian, travel writer, biographer, critic, editor, and consultant who lives amid a menagerie of adopted stray animals in Paris.

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Note: I initially thought the plastic skin could be a manufacturing fault. I was watching a documentary on Discovery, and they were making hot dog sausages on there. The plastic skin has markings on it which are used for quality control purposes and are usually removed.