Roasted Tomato and Sausage

When does a recipe become your own? How many times do you have to make it without following the original step by step to call it yours? How many changes, however slight, give you ownership of a set of instructions?

I think about that often while reading food blogs.

After the April sausage making class we had an abundance of sausages. In fact the freezer was quite full and it's only now that the numbers have dwindled enough for me to think about purchasing sausages again. For awhile we ate our homemade, artisan sausages with glee and they did in fact taste delicious - pride does add flavour! But then I started getting bored and looked around for sausage inspiration. I found a recipe on Jamie Oliver's site for sausages roasted with tomatoes to form a lovely sauce. Excellent. I followed the recipe and made the dish. Great - delicious, absolutely a make-again. And dead simple.

So the next time I glanced at the recipe and then went forth and made some changes. And then I made it again and didn't consult the recipe. And now, while the inspiration may have come from Jamie Oliver, the recipe is mine and it is one of my favourite comfort foods at the moment.

For two

Four sausages (Italian, cumberland, whatever. Preferably homemade ;)
A small mountain of cherry/grape tomatoes. I usually use a punnet and a half or so.
4 cloves of garlic, still in their skins
Herbs!
Rosemary, a sprig or two, finely chopped.
Thyme, three sprigs or so, finely chopped (or about a teaspoon of dried).
Oregano, half a teaspoon or so
Olive Oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and Pepper

The tomatoes get thrown into a roasting tin, the herbs sprinkled over top, douse with a bit of olive oil, be generous. Then add a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix about. Toss in the garlic.

Roll the sausages in the oil and place them on the tomatoes. This whole thing goes in the oven (180 degrees) for about 45 minutes. Turn the sausages and mix up the tomatoes about half through. You want them to roast and blacken a bit. Sometimes my sauce is too watery and then I pop in on the stove to boil away and simmer, adding the sausages at the end to warm up before serving.

It's unctuous and herby and warm and served over polenta that's got a shocking amount of butter and cheese in it it is one of my favourite meals of the moment.

The thing is, we are actually almost out of sausages and while the class was fun I don't really see us going back... so we'll have to BUY sausages like regular people. Ew. How common.

Adam's BBQ

Adam had a BBQ last weekend. I stressed about what to bring. I mean, we don't get to BBQ that often, so it had to be good. But it also had to be eatable with a bunch of strange people in a backyard, so I couldn't exactly go get steaks or do burnt aubergine.

So I made kebabs. Fancy ones. With rosemary sticks from the balcony. I've always wanted to do that. They look fancy and automatically special and the frangrance of the roasted rosemary was gorgeous.

Rump steak cubed and marinated in lemon zest, garlic, sage and olive oil.

Before

Cooking

We ate them in pita bread with salt and pepper chips and beer. A proper BBQ.

Pea & Broad Bean Smash

I love peas. They are my favorite vegetable. One of the things I miss most about Canada is frozen Green Giant sweet summer peas.

It's summer and everyone is talking about broad beans. I've eaten them in restaurants but have never made them myself, so I asked the green grocer how to prepare them. He said he didn't really know- he hated them when he was a kid and hasn't tried them since. Hmm. Amusing but not terribly helpful.


So instead I start poking around in the recipe books piled on the couch. I have Jamie At Home out from the library. It's a rather cruel book for someone who lives in a tiny flat in the east end of London- all about the joys of growing your own vegetables (I killed my herbs earlier this year) and eating them. I ignore Jamie's somewhat self-righteous tone and look up broad beans. He has a recipe for pea and broad beans smash that I take as inspiration and (after taking some liberty with ingredients, ratios and instructions) we eat this for dinner.

Smash the following together. A mortar and pestle would be ideal. I got C to do it with the bottom of a glass. And then the rolling pin.

Half a package of fresh peas (leftover from the risotto the other night)
A big handful of broad beans (time consuming and disappointingly few after you've shelled them all!)
Half a bunch of mint
35 g of parmesan (we weighed it)

Add enough olive oil to make a paste. Add lemon juice (I used half), salt & pepper to taste. Gently toast some delicious bread, rub ever so lightly with a cut clove of garlic. Layer thinly sliced pieces of young goats cheese, then top with the pea mixture. Serve on the lovely olive board your mom bought you.

Essence of pea.

Sardine Sunday

I decided I wanted bream for dinner, after its overwhelming success when my parents were here. We waited in line while the fish lady finished with the people in front of us and glanced over the various fish in front of us- didn't look like she had any bream (we were later than usual- managed to sleep in hurray!). I didn't want mackerel as we'd had that last week (simply grilled with a quinoa tabouli). So I pointed to one fish, asked "What's This?". Dover Sole, she replies, lovely like this and like that. Chris and I look at each other, shrug say, "sounds good" and then she pauses.

"It's also our most expensive fish."

Oh. How expensive?

"Twenty pounds a kilo."

(Mackerel is maybe half that.)

I think the look on our faces said that we were not going to be purchasing Dover Sole. So she suggested sardines. Three per person. Cheaper than mackerel. Oily omega threes.


Sardines are not anchovies. But they seem the same to me. I realize they're not - but still... So we buy six little sardines for £2.40. The fishlady chops their heads off for me.

Next day for lunch!

Jamie Oliver says that if you push the sides down around the back bone you can pull it out. I try it. You can! The little rib cages and bones are strangely beautiful and I keep bringing them to show C. I am extremely proud of myself. Not only am I making sardines, I am pulling their backbones out. I rock.


Jamie has a lovely recipe for sardines that requires a bunch of ingredients that I don't have and am too lazy to go down the stairs and to the corner to get. So I improvise.

I fry up the leftover onion and shallots from Friday's risotto and add some garlic and crushed fennel. Peel and seed four cherry tomatoes. One regular tomato would be faster and more efficient, but this is what I've got. A big handful of parsley, chopped. A sprinkling of cayenne. Three heaping tablespoons of pre-made breadcrumbs (I feel like a bad person admitting that I had prepared breadcrumbs in the house. I swear the eggs are free range!). Mixed together with some basil olive oil. A bit thrown on the bottom with some parsley stalks. A teaspoon inside each sardine, then rolled up. The rest thrown on top. Into a hot hot hot oven for ten minutes then taken out and eaten with warmed up pita.

Paired with a glass of lovely Italian white wine - a new one. So good. Such a good lunch. I made sardines - hurray!