Recipe: Nigel Slater’s Slow Baked Sausages

With a new year there were some new blog challenges; I revamped Frugal Food Fridays to Credit Crunch Munch, and Janice and Susan started Dish of the Month to showcase Nigel Slater’s excellent recipes.

I am a huge fan of Nigel (as is my mother), his food is easy to make, inspiring adaptable and not bank breaking.  I adore his writing; gentle, thoughtful and above all courteous. His use of language is a delight: on Christmas Eve “the kitchen is heavy with expectation”, how apt, evocative, charming and descriptive is that?

The Kitchen Diaries II is a book I can curl up with on the sofa in front of a roaring fire and lose myself in, reading from cover to cover in the same way you can get lost in a novel.  It is a rare skill in a food writer the only other time I have said this was about Skye Gyngell.

Nigel’s slow baked sausages are from November, but suitable for any of the dark winter months when you crave comfort food to keep out the chill of the season.  For those who do not have the book the recipe for Nigel’s Slow Baked Sausages is also to be found online.

I used a bottle of (dust encrusted) chocolate stout from the depths of the hall cupboard and added a nip of mustard to counteract the extra sweetness from it. Delicious.

My sausages were plump and meaty; pork, bacon and leek from Heap’s Simply Sausages, a review sample which has been in the freezer for some time, which I was very impressed with; a proper butcher’s sausage, available from Waitrose and well worth checking out!