The Saucy Sausage

We're over the hump of the week!  Who's ready to get on the downward slide with me to the weekend then?  Ready?  Wheeeeeeeeee!!

Ahem.

**picks self up and resumes usual air of sophistication**

So tell me something.  Have you had a sausage this week?  No?!  Well then you should!  It's British Sausage Week don'tcha know - cunningly coinciding with the week of Bonfire Night.  More bangers than you can shake a (cocktail) stick at!

Sausages galore
(photo borrowed from the t'interweb with thanks)

So are you a sausage lover, dear reader?   Gone are the days when trays of simple pork sausages graced the  butcher's window.    Each time we visit our butcher he has a new flavour to try; honey and mustard, apple and leek, lamb and mint, pork and black pudding, turkey and sweet chilli and chicken and lemon pepper to name but a few.   Would they be on your hit list to try, or do you prefer a good old fashioned plain pork banger?  I have to say that we don't really eat many as a family, but when we do, the sausage must be of good quality.  Some of the cheaper 'Value' and 'Basics' supermarket brands just taste like chaff to me and I'd rather not buy them at all than deigning to stick my fork into a little wrap of artificial flavourings and sawdust sweepings thank you very much.
One of the freebie supermarket magazines this week had a lovely recipe for roasted sausage bake.  Now oddly enough, I can't stand sausage casserole!  It gives me the creeps. (bad experience with flaccid pink undercooked sausages lurking in a watery tomato sauce = scarred for life).     Bleurgh!   However this is more of a dry roasted dish; warming, filling and very flavoursome indeed!

So - you will need 6 Beautiful Plumptious British Bangers, 3 cloves garlic (crushed), 1/2 a butternut squish, cut into cubes, a good sprinkle of dried rosemary, some olive oil, 1lb of new tatoes, 2 large parsnips cut into cubes, and if you like a bit of a kick to your meal, add some dried chilli flakes too.  (We also added peppers, a few mushrooms and a carrot - cos we're bad ass!).

It's the simplest thing - just basically toss everything together in a roasting pan and bake in the oven until the veg are soft and melting, and the sausage is brown and cooked through.  We par-boiled the potatoes to give them a head start and found that this was needed as otherwise they'd still have been a little bullet like.  Nothing else was required, apart from a little onion marmalade or cranberry sauce perhaps by way of a savoury/sweet contrast.

See you soon!

xxx