Recipe: Sausage and Cider Hotpot

In my recent post about getting hold of food during lockdown, I promised to report back on how we got on with the Morrisons food box. It's gone pretty well so far: Main meals have been Chilli Con Carne,  Chicken Satay with a salad made from the cabbage, cucumber and carrots, and Sausage and Cider Hotpot. Tonight Mark is making pizzas, using the ham and some of the cheese. We could have reduced the pasts sauce to make a topping but the one they sent includes red peppers, which upset Mark's stomach very badly,  so we'll have to use some of our own from the freezer. We've also had lunches of bacon sandwiches and leftovers from the main meals, and toast for breakfast, and the rice, potatoes, tinned soups and some of the cheese are still left to use. Not luxury eating but ideal for the situation. And I've managed to secure a supermarket delivery slot for this weekend so we'll be able to top up on fruit and veg at last!

Anyway, on with the recipe.

The box contained a pack of 6 premium sausages. I had a half-bottle of cider hanging around in the fridge - it had been open for a week but had a bottle stopper in it and was still perfectly fine when I opened it, so I decided to use that as the liquid for a hotpot. Rather than the Charlotte potatoes that had come in the box, I used some baking potatoes we already had, and onions from the box.

Recipe (serves 3, or a main meal plus a leftovers lunch for two)

6 pork sausages
a little lard, butter or oil
3 large potatoes
2 large onions
300ml dry cider (or apple juice)

Set the oven to 160 C, 325 F, gas mark 3.
Fry the sausages briskly in a little fat until browned all over.
Slice the potatoes and onions fairly thinly.

Put about half the potatoes in a casserole dish, then scatter half the onions over. Place the sausages evenly on top of them and season. Layer on the rest of the onions and then the potatoes. Pour over the cider and top with a few scraps of lard. Cover, place in the oven and cook for 1½ hours, then remove the lid, turn up the oven to 200 C, 425 F, gas mark 6 and cook for a further 20-25 minutes until the top layer of potatoes is crispy.

I served this with a mixture of all the odds and ends of veg left in the fridge - a leek, a few sprigs of cauliflower and a couple of carrots -  cooked together and coated with onion sauce that I made from a packet mix that was lurking at the back of a cupboard (the packet was only a year out of date, that's pretty good going by my standards when it comes to convenience foods!)

I am adding this to the special #KitchenClearout lockdown linky at Madhouse Family Reviews