RECIPE: Sausages with semi dried tomatoes, potatoes and pesto

Apologies to anyone wondering where all my craft posts have disappeared to - at the moment I'm not at home very much and when I am, I'm working on a rather complex project that is taking up just about all my crafting time.

However, we still need to eat, and when you're busy it's great to have a dish up your sleeve that doesn't take too much attention  - so this dish, that I rustled up yesterday, fits the bill perfectly, because the tomatoes look after themselves for an hour to leave me free to do something else (in this case, copious amounts of die cutting). Our fridge is at that stage of running it down before a holiday where you end up having mystery meals or a plain omelette every day - this is a mystery meal that I'll be repeating in future.

I planned the dish to serve 2, but in fact there would have been plenty for three.

Ingredients:

6 good quality pork sausages
250g new potatoes
1 medium onion
4 small tomatoes
150g baby button mushrooms
2 tbs basil pesto
1 tbs olive oil, plus more for spraying/drizzling
salt and pepper

Fist of all, prepare the tomatoes - this can be done in advance. Heat the oven to 140 C (120 fan, 275 F, gas mark 1). Cut the tomatoes into 6 wedges each and arrange spread out on a baking sheet. Spray with olive oil spray, if you have some, or drizzle with a tiny amount of oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook in the pre-heated oven for around an hour, until the wedges have shrunk and are semi-dried. Set aside for later.

Halve the sausages. Peel the onion and cut into 8 wedges, leaving the root end intact. Heat the oil in a lidded sauté pan on a high heat and fry the sausages and onions briskly until browned on all sides. While doing this, halve the potatoes (no need to peel). Add the potatoes to the pan, stir well and cover. reduce the heat to low and cook for around 15-20 minutes, stirring and turning from time to time so the potatoes brown evenly. When the potatoes are almost done, wipe and halve the button mushrooms and stir them into the mixture. Replace the lid and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Remove the lid and stir in the pesto and tomatoes. Mix together gently and heat for another minute or so to warm the tomatoes.

Serve with a green salad.

This was just knocked together out of odds and ends, apart from the sausages - and even top notch sausages are a pretty cheap form of protein. But oh my goodness it was good, it tasted just like summer! The potatoes absorbed all the lovely sausage oniony juices and the pesto and tomatoes gave everything a zing. The mushrooms? Well to be honest they were just there because they needed using, I think the dish would be just as tasty without them.

I am sharing this with

Credit Crunch Munch at Lovely Appetite, Fab Food 4 All and Fuss Free Flavours

 

 

No Waste Food Challenge at Utterly Scrummy 

 

 

Kitchen Clearout at Madhouse Family Reviews