The Cottage Smallholder

Baked sausages with apples and onions

Sometimes it’s really good to get home, pour a large glass of wine and rustle up a dish that takes just ten minutes to prepare and is cooked in under an hour. This dish also keeps warm well and is a delight when you eventually tuck in.

It’s one of those easy dishes. Filling the kitchen with great aromas as you get on with the more enjoyable sides of life than standing by a hot stove.

I made a very similar dish a few weeks ago and we loved it. This evening I discovered that the recipe had been swept away on a kitchen clearing binge. So one hour became two as I shuffled through the carrier bags that are my temporary filing system (and have been for the last eight years).

In the end I started the half remembered recipe from scratch again. Delicious food for heroes and heroines. It tastes as if you’ve slaved for hours.

Baked sausages with Bramley apples, honey and star anise recipe

Ingredients:

• I pack of sausages (roughly 450g)
• 150g of onions sliced and chopped very fine
• 250g of Bramley apples (or any other cooking variety, at a pinch)
• Half a teaspoonful of dry English mustard powder
• 1 star anise
• 2 tablespoons of honey

Method:

Set your oven to 200c (180c fan)

1. Peel, slice and chop your onions very fine. Peel and core the apples and slice each quarter lengthways into three and slice across into three. Put the onions and apples into an oven proof dish.
2. Put the star anise in the centre of the dish.
3. Lay the sausages over the bed of onions and apples. Sprinkle the sausages with the mustard powder and pour over the honey.
4. Bake the sausages in the oven for forty minutes, turning them over once after 25 minutes.

Serve with mashed potatoes and some tasty green vegetables.