Spicing Up A Winter Evening

With recent climate change and all that, we don't see the winter evenings that my parents used to tell me about, when the snow piled up against the door and carol singers wore woolly mittens and ear muffs.

But all things are relative and it's been feeling pretty cold in London over the past few evenings, so I thought I'd send dad to our favourite Italian deli Gallo Nero in Stoke Newington to buy some of owner Michael's beautiful gluten-free, preservative-free peppered sausages.

This meal is the very simple but quite wonderful Tuscan spicy sausages with leek & onion. Just over an hour to prepare and cook.

By the time these sausages have disembarked from the morning flight from Florence and passed through UK Customs & Excise, their individual appearance fee has risen to about 80p (€1.20/$1.60). It may be tempting to go for something cheaper, but this meal depends on the product, so accept no substitutes!

Unlike cheap sausages, these pure meat beasts take quite a long time to cook properly. I sear them and then braise in beer or red wine with leek and onions, which are sweated off first and then introduced in batches while the sausages are cooking, to give a gradation in texture from lightly cooked to thoroughly cooked.

I add yet more black pepper - as much as my guests and I can stand - and some herbs. Best for sausages are marjoram, bay and fennel.

You can serve this dish with almost anything and my dad has even been known to eat it with a crispy green salad.

But I think these sausages go best with a very dry mash potato, so that's what we had last night. Very different from pomme purée, this potato dish is made by boiling scrubbed young potatoes in their skins until just soft enough to mash, then adding a little butter, double cream, salt and pepper.

The result is a rustic, robust and well-textured potato that stands up for itself and is not drowned out by the sausage and leek & onion. If I'd remembered to photograph the result before dimming the lights (doh!) it would have looked even better, but believe me it tasted just great. So what's wrong with winter, eh? I can feel the mulled wine coming on...