Sausage Casserole

Inevitably, the colder weather has led to lots of talk about warming winter dishes. We’ve been trying to keep it as healthy as possible recently but today I gave in and braved the weather in search of sausages. I found some lovely looking Cumberland sausages at the butcher and decided to give sausage casserole another go.

As you can see from this post, this is not a dish we’ve had a lot of success with in the past but it’s something I’ve remained determined to master. It’s been on the Things To Cook Soon page for what seems like years (it probably is years!) but, inspired by Antonia’s recent success, I hit the kitchen and began to chop and peel.

I started by browning the sausages and then removing them from the pan. Next I sauteed a couple of diced shallots, a stick of celery, a carrot and two cloves of crushed garlic. Then I added the leaves of one stem of rosemary and the same of thyme and returned the sausages to the pan.

Next in was a large glass of red wine, some vegetable stock, seasoning and a splash of Worcester sauce. The dish was then transferred to the oven for 45 minutes on 140 degrees.

The sauce had reduced quite a lot but was still too thin so we removed the sausages and reduced the liquid on the hob. It was at this point that I realised I had forgotten to add the tinned tomatoes so we improvised and added some tomato puree instead.

This was a much better dish than the previous attempt but it still needs some refinement: tomatoes and some extra vegetable stock would help to balance the sauce and remove the slightly bitter edge.