Sausages

Sausages made from British meat always seem to be available, so I tend to eat them quite often. A slightly less well known form of sausage is the beef sausage and there are some particularly fine Aberdeen Angus beef sausages around in the supermarkets. I always prefer to cook sausages in the oven, which takes about 30 minutes at 190C. This gives plenty of time to do something else, like make a tasty sauce to go with them!

Such a sauce can be made easily enough from some chopped shallot onions, which have a much sweeter flavour then 'normal' onions, half a tin of chopped tomatoes and some garlic. Simply fry the shallots in some oil until they are soft. As far as I can tell, British shallots are around in the supermarkets at the moment. For the oil, olive oil works well, but for a British alternative, consider cold-pressed hemp seed oil. This has a slightly different flavour, but it's quite nice and it has many of the same good qualities of olive oil. Add some salt, pepper and chopped garlic (about 3 sections from the bulb). Stir this around and let it simmer away until the onion is soft. Then, simply add half a tin of chopped tomatoes, stir, then cover and leave to simmer gently until the sausages are done. I have never found tins of chopped British tomatoes, but it would be equally possible to use fresh tomatoes, but they should be peeled first, which does take some time (to make this a bit easier, blanch them in boiling water first, but remember, they'll be hot afterwards!).

Once the sausages are done, I like to chop them and stir into the sauce before serving with pasta or mashed potatoes. Of course, unless you make your own pasta, it probably wont be British.