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Rick Steins Fennel sausages braised with lemony potatoes and bay leaves

Its been a while, not sure how I managed to let work get in the way of blogging ... anyway here's a little simple supper dish from Rick Stein that I was reminded of by Saturday Kitchen yesterday.

It also meant that I visited a local Italian deli for the first time where I had a nice chat with the Sicilian owner and his mother.

They sell the perfect sausages for this dish which are called luganega, which normally come in one long length. If you are using ordinary sausages, add a teaspoon of fennel seeds to the onions when frying.


Ingredients




450g/1lb luganega sausages

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

750g/1½lb small waxy potatoes, peeled and each cut into quarters

½ lemon, pared zest (I did mine on a microplane) and juice only

4 fresh bay leaves

2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper

120ml/4fl oz water


method


Preheat the oven to 180C/350F Twist the sausages into 7.5cm/3in lengths and separate them into individual sausages (I couldn't do this to mine without breaking the skin but it didn't seem to matter

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a 26cm/10in shallow flameproof casserole dish. Add the sausages and fry until nicely browned all over. Lift them onto a plate and set aside.

Add the onion, garlic and another tablespoon of oil to the casserole dish and fry until soft and lightly golden. Stir in the potatoes, browned sausages, lemon zest and juice, bay leaves, half the chopped parsley, ½ teaspoon salt and ten turns of the black pepper mill.

Pour over the rest of the oil along with the water, cover tightly with the lid and bake for 30-40 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Remove the lemon zest (no need to remove if you have microplaned the zest) and sprinkle with the rest of the parsley before serving.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks for posting this, good 'ol google☺
nb: I bought fresh bayleaves and they wwent mouldy as this recipe has water too I've measured out the water boiling and added the 4 dried bayleaves to it, in 2 hours when I go to cook this dish all the benifits will be the same, Also I use a mixture of sausies 2 chorizo,4 beef and 4 pork

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