Roast sausage, apple and potato with cabbage and cider gravy

I must start by apologising that September’s recipe is so late. Despite this, the main star in this dish, apples, thankfully continue to be plentiful into October. Here I have used them to give extra sweetness to a roasted sausage and potato dish. Originally, we used English codlings, a heritage variety from Ben’s orchard, and found that these lost their shape very quickly and nicely coated the other roasties in an apple mush. Any cooking apple will work well though and if you prefer your apples with a bit more shape add the slices later into the roasting period. The addition of cider to the gravy adds quite a bit of sweetness, which I really like!

8 sausages

2 cooking apples

2 baking potatoes

2 onions

20g butter

salt

pepper

a few sprigs of thyme

8-10 sage leaves

 

half a savoy cabbage

a few tablespoons of butter

 

half a small onion

250 ml chicken stock

200 ml dry cider

tablespoon butter

tablespoon flour

pepper

1. First heat your oven to 200^OC and cut the potatoes into chunks and the apples into thick slices. Peel and half the onions before cutting each half into 4 by slicing lengthways.
2. Put the butter into a large roasting dish or tin and put it into the oven. Once melted add the sausages, potatoes, apple and onion and toss to make sure they are well coated. Season with salt and pepper and put back into the oven.
3. After 30 minutes take the tray out and add the sage and thyme, toss everything around and return to the oven for a further 20 minutes.
4. Once the tray is back in the oven slice the cabbage into thin strips, heat some butter in a pan and add the cabbage. Saute until soft and tender.
5. To make a simple gravy finely slice the onion and add it to a pan with the melted butter. Once the onion is soft add the flour and stir in, then slowly pour in the stock, stirring to make sure there aren’t any lumps. Finally, add in the cider and bubble until you are happy with the consistency.
6. Once, everything is ready dole out the roast sausage and veg, give each person a nice helping of cabbage and drizzle with gravy.

I also think this works really well with vegetarian sausages and vegetable stock.

Holly