Sausage gratin

This is a slight variation on a recipe I've done before with sausage and asparagus, but it's a great way of cooking sausages if you're fed up of frying or grilling them!  To make, simply cook some potatoes in lightly salted, boiling water until they are nearly done.  Test them by sticking a fork or a skewer in and feeling the texture, it should still be firm and just ever so slightly 'gritty' which indicates that the potato is not fully cooked.  As we are going to be finishing them off in the oven, this is OK.

 While the potatoes are boiling, wash and chop some asparagus, peel and finely chop an onion, slice the sausages (I used three good sized, pork and apple sausages in this case) into good sized chunks.  Layer all of these ingredients into a heat proof dish, with the chopped onion at the bottom.  I added a layer of cherry tomatoes as well, as you can see.  I also put in a good bunch of freshly chopped herbs, in this case thyme, rosemary and sage.  A small pinch of course sea salt is a good idea at this stage to.  In this case, I am relying on the tomatoes to produce juice as they cook.  If you don't use tomatoes, you might find it necessary to add a little stock - chicken or vegetable would work well.

Once you've done that, slice the par-boiled potatoes and use the slices to cover the top of the dish, like so:

 Add some grated cheese and some freshly ground black pepper and place in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 40 minutes to an hour.  You can tell when it's cooked because the top will be all nice and brown and the juices in the bottom of the dish will be bubbling away nicely.  I'd recommend at least 40 minutes though, just to make sure that the sausages are cooked through properly.