Slow Cooker Beans & Sausage with Pangritata

I have cause to celebrate: a slow cooker recipe which WORKS and is DELICIOUS. Although, yes, the final stage did involve whizzing up the pangritata and finishing off the whole thing in the oven. Can I also thank the obscure, relatively unknown cookery writer Mr Jamie Oliver for showing me how to make pangritata, cos it is amazing. It is basically like crumbled up crispy garlic breadcrumbs all over your dinner. 

This is what I did:

Soaked and boiled up about 250g (half a bag) of dried cannellini beans

Put them in the slow cooker and add a jar of good tomato pasta sauce, a tin of chopped tomatoes, and some nice sausages (I used toulouse sausages).

Cook on low for 10 hours or whatever. 

When you get in from work, transfer the contents of the slow cooker into an ovenproof dish.

Lightly toast 2 thick slices of bread.

Whizz them up in a food processor with a couple of cloves of garlic. If you feel you would like to add say, some lemon zest or oregano, I say bloody go for it!

Melt a nob of butter with a splash of olive oil in a frying pan. Add the garlicky crumbs and fry them for about 5 mins. Keep moving them around. When they are toasty, tip them over the sausage and beans and spread them out gently. Don't press them down though.

Bake in a hot oven for 30 mins.

Meatloaf - Ode to The Food Pornographer!

Whilst taking my rumbling tummy for a walk on the web recently, I came across this utterly stunning meat loaf recipe on The Food Pornographer (you will have to visit and look at hers!) and I had to make one for myself. I admit, its the sight of those smiley cheeky eggs in the middle that get to me ...

I made my own version based on what seemed good to me, with beef, sausagemeat, onion, some little bits of chopped ham, stuffing mix (better than breadcrumbs, in these situations, I reckon) and against ALL my instincts and upbringing - I smeared the top with tomato ketchup before it went in the oven. As far as I can tell, most of the americans do this to their meatloaves too. "Ketchup Glaze" they call it ... anyway. It baked in the oven for an hour. Delicious. Thanks TFP!

Hot Veggie Sausage, Pesto, Mozzarella Cheese, Caramelized Onion & Sundried Tomato Baguette

Prepare ingredients: slice the cheese, snip up the tomatoes, cook the onions slowly for a long time, fry the sausage, etc.
Stuff the baguette and carefully squeeze it closed. Wrap tightly in foil, and bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.
Unwrap and EAT!

Beanfeast with Cheesy Dumplings

This most excellent recipe comes from an old Sainsburys recipe book called "50 recipes for cheese" (which you might be able to find on Amazon Marketplace..) Basically in a big pot you do onion, carrots, parsnips, tins of tomatoes, butter beans, and kidney beans, and a bit of curry powder, then you make dumplings with a noggin of cheese in the centre and let them cook and fluff up ... and when we made it here, we put more cheese on top.

We ate it with veggie sausages, and Marlena Spieler's recipe for New Mexican mild red chilli bread!!

Pasta Bake

This was made with minced beef, chilli sausagemeat, tomato sauce, more tomatoes, tomato puree and red wine. Mixed with pasta, then with cheese sauce (with added eggs) on top. Baked in hot oven until golden on top.

Fred's Ultimate Sandwich: BLT with SGD

I want more Ultimate Sandwiches! (Thanks to Hannah for the idea too)

This is the Ultimate Sandwich of my 9 year old son. I am glad I was able to take a picture which captured every ingredient. This is essentially, a BLT with added sausages, and garlic dip... so starting from the bottom we have "lettuce" (although in this case, it's watercress and baby spinach), garlic dip, crispy bacon, sliced tomatoes, and sausages. At the time of writing, he is demolishing it with fervour ..

Easter Food To Get You In The Mood ;-)

Fill a large roasting tin with 2 aubergines, 3 courgettes, 2 red onions, 2 red peppers, a bulb of whole garlic cloves, 3 tins of tomatoes, a tin of tomato puree, about a third of a bottle of red wine, and several generous glugs of olive oil. Season, stir it around and roast in a hot oven until the vegetables are soft, caramelised and most of the liquid has evaporated. Be prepared to wait about two hours for this.
When it is just about done, you can stick a few veggie sausages on top and cook them for a bit. When you know you have about 10 minutes to go, put slices of mozzarella on top too.
To prepare the garlic and chilli bread, mix garlic puree (two generous spoonfuls please) into a block of soft butter. Chop atleast 4 red chillies finely and mix them in. Daub the butter generously into the slits in the bread. Wrap it in foil and give it a good 20 minutes.
Serve with pasta and grate parmesan on top.

Bonfire Night Bangers & Mash

Plus some swede, and onion gravy.