Recipe: Autumnal Sausage & Apple Pie

Earlier in the autumn, I was feeling particular autumnal, and was looking for something apt to cook one weekend and for me, sausages and apples are pretty autumnal.

So I decided to put them in to a pie. Pies are one of those things, much like casseroles, that are pretty easy to do. They are largely formulaic to the point of being boring (if it wasn't for the fact that they taste great that is!) - that’s not to say they cant be experimental, or wacky, more that if you have a solid ingredient base, then you really can't go wrong. In this case, sausage and apple being a tried and tested pairing, it was just a case of going through the motions and slapping it in some pastry.

Once again, I didn't make the pastry myself - its something I neither have the time, or any real great inclination to get involved with. Shop bought ready-to-roll works fine for my pies, and I just let the filling do all the hard work.

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Anyway, as I said, its a pretty formulaic thing - Start with a savoury base using butter and some aromatics (in this case, as often, leeks), then add some flour and a bit of flavour (whether it be tomato purée for a red meat casserole, or something else - this time wholegrain mustard, because I love mustard and pork), add the primary filling then cover with stock (or other flavoured liquids such as alcohol - even water will work though), reduce and then bang into a pie!

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Ingredients

• 10-12 sausages (judging by the size of your pie)
• 1 large apple (I have cooked this twice - the first time I used two apples, and it was just a touch too apple-y for my liking, so reduced the second time around), roughly chopped
• 1 large tablespoon butter
• 1-2 tablespoons of plain flour
• 1 large leek
• Pastry (make your own or shop bought)
• 150ml cider (I do this by eye - I bought a normal sized bottle of cider, but guess it was something like 100-150 ml I added)
• 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard 
• 200ml stock (vegetable, chicken, whatever. Cubes are fine)

Method

Pre-heat the oven according to your pastry - the filling will be cooked by the time it hits the oven, so we are just heating and cooking the pastry.

1.  Cook the sausages - either in the oven or grill, pan
2. Whilst cooking, melt the butter in a heavy frying pan and cook the leeks with a generous pinch of salt until soft and starting to brown
3. Add the chopped apples and heat for a few minutes
4. Add the plain flour and stir through to bring together the juices
5. Add the mustard and stir through to form a paste with the leeks
6. Once the sausages are cooked, add them and any juices to the pan and stir through to mix together
7. add the stock and the cider to the pan, and simmer gently on a medium heat to reduce - once reduced to a pie like thickness (well, a bit less viscous actually, as it will continue to thicken whilst cooling) take off the heat and leave to cool
8. Put together with your pastry and slap in the oven to cook. Serve with other vegetables, mash, whatever..

Awesome macaroni cheese

Well, still to sign of healthy or lighter food around here.  I guess whilst the weather is still cold I might as well make the most of it and continue to cook ridiculously un-healthy, stodgy food. I was looking for something a little different yesterday, but in the end I didn't have long before the rugby started today so just went with what I know.

Mac & cheese is apparently recovering from a bad reputation of bad school dinners and generally poorly made meals, but I'm not really sure how. It seems to me that making a good macaroni cheese is as simple as using good cheese.  This recipe has a few components, but really if need be it can be boiled down (not literally) to just the cheese sauce.


The cheese sauce is thick, smooth and cheesy, which works well with the leek & bacon. I serve/eat it with cherry tomatoes to brighten it up and provide some much needed acidity to the rich cheese sauce.

Ingredients

• 250g pasta (I went with amori pasta this time)
  
• 250g strong (mature) cheddar - I suspect it goes without saying, but the stronger the cheese, the stronger the sauce!
  
• 65g of smoked cheddar (this quantity is made up, as usual, based on the amount of smoked cheddar I had to hand, but having cooked with smoked cheddar before, if you put too much in you will have an overwhelming smoked cheese flavour - so I would recommend sticking to not much more) I used Applewood smoked cheddar.
  
• 500ml milk (semi-skimmed, whole, whatever)
  
• 6 rashes smoked bacon
  
• 2 medium size leeks, roughly chopped
  
• 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter (1 for the cheese sauce, one for the leeks)
  
• 1 tablespoon of flour
  
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
  
• 2 bay leaves (optional)
  
• 1 slice of bread
  
• parmesan for topping (optional)
  
• Tomatoes & salad to serve

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

1. Cook the pasta in slightly salted water (however long the pasta says, normally about 10 minutes or so)
   
   
2. Cook the leeks with one tablespoon of butter over a medium-high heat, until soft. Add the chopped bacon and cook until soft
   
   
3. Melt the other tablespoon of butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Once melted add the flour and whisk into a paste.
   
   
4. Slowly add the milk to the paste (still over the heat), whisking each time - the first half of the milk or so you should be able to whisk the sauce in to a fairly smooth consistency
   
   
5. Add the bay leaves to the sauce and bring to a gentle simmer over a low heat (stirring occasionally)
   
   
6. Once the sauce is at a slow simmer gradually, remove the bay leaves add the grated cheese, stirring in until melted each time. Once the cheese is added, stir in the mustard
   
   
7. In an oven proof dish, mix the drained pasta, cheese sauce and bacon and leeks, mix through
   
   
8. Over the top, sprinkle breadcrumbs and grated parmesan (I use a cheese grater to create quick breadcrumbs for the top - just grab a slice bread, hold it pretty compacted and grate)
   
   
9. Add to the oven and cook for 20 minutes or so (or stick under the grill, whatever)

I served it with chopped cheery tomatoes to brighten up the meal, and add some much needed acidity to the thick cheese sauce, but also works well straight from the pan.

Recipe: Lemon & mustard Sausages

So here's what happened.  Yesterday, my older son kept going on about how sausages were his favourite food. The last two dinner times, the question of whether we were having sausages (and why not) came up, with yesterday's dinner resulting in him marching to the freezer to get them out for himself.

Fast forward to this morning, and I wake up with sausages on my mind.  You ever been to some catered event with canapés, where they have little wholegrain mustard cocktail sausages? That's what I was in the mood for.  Not having either sausages or mustard in the house, I had to go shopping.

I can't take much credit for this recipe, as it is largely based on a pork belly recipe from Nigel Slater's Real Cooking book.

The pork belly recipe is a fantastic slow-cook casserole, with the fat from the pork belly acting as lubricant and the meat slowly turning melt-in-your-mouth.  However, that recipe assumes 1) you have 4+ hours cooking & prep time 2) you have pork belly (and some other fancier ingredients).  I had sausages and approximately 40 minutes to get food ready, so needed some tuning.

The only real constraints I had was that I wanted mustard sausages, but remembering the Nigel Slater pork belly, and how well the lemon cuts through the mustard & pork I figured it was worth a punt.

It tastes good. And for those adverse to mustard, it isn't actually that mustard-y, well not, hot mustard-y anyway.

Ingredients

• 8 pork sausages. I just used supermarket standard sausages
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 onion
• 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard 
• 1 lemon

Method

Preheat the oven to about 170 degrees (I just went by what the sausages said for cooking, so do that)

1. In a casserole dish, melt the butter on the hob, once melted, chuck in the onions and cook on a medium heat until slightly translucent and soft.  In the pork belly recipe, Nigel Slater starts by oven cooking the onions and some garlic in the oven for 25 minutes. If you have the time and the inclination, you could do this too (I happened to have 15 mins before the sausages had to go on so having initially cooked the onions in the butter on the hob, I then stuck them in the oven whilst I chopped potatoes)
   
   
2. Stir in a heaped tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. You could always go 1 1/2 tablespoons if you wanted.  Then chop the lemon in to 4 and squeeze in the juice. Stir, the mustard, lemon juice, onions and butter together
   
   
3. Add the sausages, and mix up a bit so the mustard-lemon-onion-butter sauce is coating the sausages. Then add the 4 lemon quarter shells on top. Stick in the oven and cook for 25mins (again I was just going by the sausage cooking times) - I had my pot covered for the first half, but its not really going to make much difference in this time frame
   
   
4. Once cooked, discard the lemon shells and serve. I served with mash potato, but it would be awesome with crusty bread - especially to mop up the mustard-lemon-onion-butter (in fact I have saved some of the juices and 1 sausage from the left overs for lunch tomorrow!)