Use sausages with a high meat content for this recipe, ones with little or no rusk in the mix is good, so the sausages will cook firm in the red wine sauce. Serve the cooked sausages sliced into fat coins draped over a spoon of gorgonzola on a sourdough cracker as ultimate party food to serve with drinks this festive season. This is everything a fancy snack should be, crunchy, savoury, salty, creamy and with a suggestion of sweetness from the red wine that you’ve cooked the sausages in. Always cook with wine that you wouldn’t mind drinking a glass of, one for you, and one for the pot, a sure-fire route to delicious food.
Serves 4 as a canapé
Ingredients:
4 tbsp good olive oil oil
2 shallots, peeled and finely sliced sliced
2- 3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
400g sausages, high meat content, little or no rusk rusk
2 bay leaves, scrunched a little
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed a little
1 tbsp plain flour flour
200ml good dry red wine wine
Salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Small bunch sage, leaves picked picked
150g gorgonzola dolce
Peter’s Yard Sourdough Original Crackers
Method:
Heat the olive oil in a good saucepan over a moderate heat and add the whole sage leaves. Cook until the sage leaves bubble and the leaves turn crisp. Remove the sage leaves with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen towel, reserving the oil in the pan.
Add the shallots to the oil in the pan and cook for around 5 minutes over a moderate – low heat until soft and just beginning to take on some colour, add the sausages and cook for around 5 minutes to par cook and even take on a little colour, add the garlic, pinch of salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Add the bay leaves and cook for 1 minute more until all is fragrant.
Add the flour to the sausages in the pan, stirring well to coat, then add the red wine, turn up the heat and bring the pan to a gentle simmer. Reduce the heat back down to moderate and cook uncovered for around 20 minutes, until the sauce surrounding the sausages is thickened and rich. Check the seasoning, adding more salt if necessary (remember sausages can be salty) and be generous with the black pepper. Remove from the heat, just warm or room temperature is fine for this canapé.
When ready to assemble, cut the sausages into fat coins and top each Peter’s Yard Sourdough Cracker with a small blob of gorgonzola, add a piece of the cooked sausage and drizzle over with a little of the reduced red wine and shallot sauce then top with a crisp fried sage leaf to serve.
