Roasted Italian sausages with borlotti beans and ’nduja sauce

What nicer place is there to shop than an Italian deli and in Theo Randall's inspiring book The Italian Deli Cookbook you can find out what to do with all those tempting ingredients you find there.

Here is his recipe for roasted Italian sausages with borlotti beans and nduja, a spicy Calabrian sausage. Sausages with sausage sauce - what's not to like?!

Theo writes: "Dried borlotti beans from the protected area of Lamon, in the Veneto, are the finest dried borlottis available. You don’t have to use these specifically, of course, but if you are lucky enough to come across a packet, you are in for a treat. Combined with lovely, flavoursome sausage and the spiciness of ’nduja, they are heavenly."

Serves 2

250g (9oz) dried borlotti beans, soaked overnight in plenty of cold water

2 garlic cloves, 1 whole, 1 finely sliced

1 plum tomato

2–3 sage leaves

3 tbsp olive oil

4 Italian sausages

2 celery sticks, finely chopped

1 red onion, finely chopped

2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped

100ml (3½fl oz) red wine

400g (14oz) tomato passata

75g (2½oz) skinned ’nduja

2 tbsp mascarpone

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

200g (7oz) purple-sprouting, calabrese or longstem broccoli, cooked and seasoned with olive oil and sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to serve

Drain the soaked beans and rinse under cold, running water for a couple of minutes. Place the rinsed beans in a large saucepan and pour in cold water so that the water comes 10cm (4in) above the level of the beans.

Add the whole clove of garlic, along with the plum tomato and sage leaves. Place over a high heat and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook gently for 40 minutes, skimming off the foam from time to time, until the beans are soft enough to crush to a mash with your thumb. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking water. Remove the tomato, sage and garlic and place them in a bowl. Using a hand-held stick blender and a little of the bean cooking water, blend to a smooth paste. Add the paste back to the beans and check the seasoning. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/315°F/Gas Mark 2–3.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in an ovenproof frying pan on a medium heat. When hot, add the sausages and cook for 5 minutes, turning frequently, until brown all over. Remove them from the pan and set aside, leaving the sausage fat and olive oil in the pan.

Add the celery, sliced garlic, onion and carrots to the pan and cook gently for 5 minutes, until the onion has softened. Add the red wine and cook for a further 2 minutes until the liquid has reduced by half. Add the passata, cook gently for a couple of minutes, then add the ’nduja and stir well.

Place the sausages on top of the passata mixture and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, until the sausages are cooked through. Remove from the oven, dollop over the mascarpone and check the seasoning.

Warm the cooked borlotti beans and stir through the remaining olive oil.

Place on the table for each person to help themselves, with some steaming hot purple sprouting broccoli served alongside.

What to drink: Theo says "make sure you have a good bottle of Chianti,or other super-Tuscan red wine to drink alongside – it’s essential." Who am I to disagree although I wold argue that barbera would work with this hearty dish too.

Extracted from The Italian Deli Cookbook by Theo Randall (Quadrille, £26) Photography: Lizzie Mayson

Tom Kerridge's sausage, tomato and butterbean stew

You might associate Tom Kerridge with fancy cooking but his time with footballer Marcus Rashford has found its way into his latest book Real Life Recipes which are, as the tiitle suggests, basic easy recipes to cook for the family. This hearty sausage dish is perfect for the chilly weather we're having now

Tom writes: I guarantee this one-pot sausage stew will become a new regular on your midweek menu. It delivers on all fronts with filling beans, sweet cherry tomatoes and smokiness from the paprika. Get a good colour on the sausages in the pan first, as this really boosts the flavour.:

SERVES 4

1 tbsp olive oil

8 pork sausages

2 onions, finely sliced

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tsp sweet smoked paprika

1 tbsp tomato purée

120ml red wine

400ml beef stock

2 tbsp rosemary leaves, roughly chopped

400g tin chopped tomatoes

2 x 400g tins butter beans, drained and rinsed

150g cherry tomatoes, halved

2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat a large non-stick casserole pan over a medium-high heat. When hot, add the olive oil followed by the sausages. Cook, turning, for around 5–6 minutes or until well browned on all sides. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside on a plate.

2. Add the onions to the pan and sauté for 2–3 minutes then add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in the paprika and tomato purée and cook for 1 minute before deglazing the pan with the wine. Let bubble, stirring gently, until the wine is reduced by half.

3. Add the beef stock, rosemary and tinned tomatoes and bring the sauce to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Now add the sausages back to the pan, along with the butter beans. Leave to simmer gently for another 5 minutes or so.

4. Lastly stir in the cherry tomatoes and cook for another 2–3 minutes or until the tomatoes are just starting to break down. Taste the sauce for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Sprinkle over the chopped parsley.

5. Divide the stew between warmed bowls or plates and serve with crusty bread, or mashed potato if you prefer.

What to drink: A hearty red - the same as you're putting in the stew would be perfect. I'd suggest an inexpensive Côtes du Rhône or Languedoc red.

Extract taken from Real Life Recipes by Tom Kerridge Published by Bloomsbury Absolute at £26 Photography © Cristian Barnett

Gill Meller's raised pork, chicken and parsley pie

If you fancy a cooking project this weekend Gill Meller's raised pork, chicken and parsley pie from his new book Outside would be perfect.

Gill writes: There are two pleasures here. The first is pie making. The second, pie eating.

Pie making is the kind of cookery you settle into, like a good book, so give yourself time. Each stage of the recipe is a chapter, in a sense, and the finished pie, cooling on the sideboard, is the last page, the conclusion.

Eating the pie, particularly this pie, is equally enjoyable. You are like an architect at this point, stepping back and admiring your work, although in this case you get to eat your own building. A big pie like this needs to be made the day before your picnic – it gives everything time to cool and find its place.

SERVES 8

‘For the hot water crust pastry

200g (7oz) pork lard

500g (1lb 2oz) plain (all-purpose)

flour, plus extra for dusting

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 eggs

For the filling

1.5–2kg (3lb 5oz–4lb 8oz) organic

or free-range chicken, preferably with giblets

350g (12oz) fatty pork belly, cubed

200g (7oz) bacon lardons or chopped streaky bacon

a large handful of flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped

a handful of chives, finely sliced

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

a good pinch of grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll need an 18–20cm diameter by 7–9cm (7–8in x 2¾–3½in) deep pie dish or cake tin.

To make the pastry, put the lard and 170ml (5½fl oz) of water into a pan and warm them over a low heat until the fat has melted and the mixture is warm – it doesn’t have to boil.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the flour with the salt. Crack one of the eggs into a bowl and beat it lightly.

Pour the lard and water mixture into the flour. Add the beaten egg and bring everything together to form a dough. Gather up the dough and place it on a work surface. Fold the pastry four or five times until smooth.

Allow the pastry to cool in the fridge. It’ll be much easier to work with if it’s not warm.

While the pastry is chilling, make the pie filling. Place the chicken on a board. Remove the giblets from the cavity.

Use a sharp knife to remove each leg from the bird. Divide the drumsticks from the thighs. Carefully remove the chicken breasts. Try not to leave any meat on the carcass. Remove the skin from the legs and breasts – you can save this and all the chicken bones for making a delicious stock.

Cut the leg and thigh meat away from the bones and place it in a bowl with the cubed fatty pork belly and the lardons or chopped bacon. Trim the chicken liver and heart and add this to the other meats.

Give everything a good mix, then put it through a mincer. Or, if you don’t have a mincer, chop the meat to a relatively fine consistency by hand. (This can take time but it’s worth the effort.) Place the minced chicken and pork back into a large bowl and add the parsley and chives, along with the ground white and black pepper, nutmeg and salt.

Cut the chicken breasts into 2–3cm (3⁄4–1.in) cubes and add this to the minced pork and chicken, too. Carefully turn the chunks of chicken through the minced pork, herbs and seasoning so everything’s really well mixed and evenly distributed. Cover and refrigerate until needed.

Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/Gas 4.

Set aside a quarter of the pastry for the pie lid. Form the remaining three-quarters into a round and, on a floured surface, roll it out into a circle, roughly 35cm (14in) in diameter. Lay the pastry in the pie dish, carefully bringing it up the sides and smoothing out any pleats (of which there will be many) as you go, to make the pie case. Leave a very slight overhang of pastry all round.

Fill the lined tin with the chicken and pork mixture, making sure you don’t leave any unfilled gaps. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come all the way to the top of the pie dish; it’s fine.

Roll out the smaller portion of pastry for the pie lid. It should have the same diameter as the pie dish itself.

Crack the remaining egg into a bowl and beat it to make a glaze. Use a pastry brush to brush the rim of the pastry with a little beaten egg. Carefully ease the lid into place and crimp the edges together in a tight, neat fashion. You’ll have to trim any overhanging edges back to the crimped seam at this point. Use the tip of a knife to make a small hole in the middle of the lid.

Set the pie in the middle of the oven and bake it for 20 minutes, then lower the oven setting to 160°C/140°C fan/315°F/Gas 2–3. Brush the top of the pie all over with beaten egg and return it to the oven for a further 1 hour 10 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden and the filling is cooked through. Remove the pie from the oven and allow it to cool, then refrigerate it for 6–8 hours or overnight before slicing and eating.

What to drink: I actually think a pale or golden ale or a medium dry cider would be perfect with this dish but if you fancy a glass of wine a light red like a Beaujolais would also work well.

Extracted from OUTSIDE: Recipes for a Wilder Way of Eating by Gill Meller (Quadrille, £30) Photography: Andrew Montgomery

Dublin coddle

If you're wondering what to prepare to celebrate St Patrick's Day, Coddle could be the answer. Here's the version from J P McMahon's magnificent new The Irish Cookbook.

JP writes: "Coddle, or Dublin coddle to be more precise, is a dish made up of leftover sausages and bacon. Traditionally, the sausages and bacon were cut up and combined with onions and potatoes and left to stew in a light broth. Though often unappetizing to look at, the dish was made famous by several Irish writers, from Jonathan Swift to James Joyce and Seán O’Casey.

Modern versions include barley and carrots. It is essentially a dish that grew out of poverty and famine and then migrated into the working-class areas of Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century to become a dish of central importance to the people who lived there. Often it contained a drop of Guinness (or it was eaten with plenty of pints and soda bread).

It is said that the housewives would prepare the coddle during the day and it would sit on the stove until the men returned home from the pub. The word itself is derived from the verb ‘to coddle’ or ‘to cook’ (from French caulder). With its associations of poverty, it is surprising to find ‘authentic’ recipes, especially given the status of the dish as being made with whatever leftovers were to hand (as in pig’s trotters/feet, pork ribs, etc.). Some associate it with the Catholic Church’s insistence of abstaining from meat on a Friday.

Coddle was a way of using up the bacon and sausages on a Thursday. In this recipe, I fry the ingredients before covering them with the stock, but traditionally they were just layered and simmered until cooked.

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 1 hour

Serves: 8

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 tablespoons rapeseed (canola) oil, plus extra if needed
• 500 g sausages, cut into pieces if preferred
• 500 g streaky (regular) bacon, cut into pieces
• 500 g onions, sliced
• 2 tablespoons chopped thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 1 kg (9 medium) potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 4 tablespoons chopped parsley
• freshly ground black pepper

METHOD:

Warm the oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the sausages and bacon and fry for about 10 minutes until they have a nice colour. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside.

Add the sliced onions to the pan and a little more oil if necessary. Reduce the heat and fry for about 10 minutes so that the onions caramelize slowly.

When the onions have a nice colour, return the sausages and bacon to the pan and add the thyme and bay leaves. Cover with the chicken stock (broth) and return to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the potatoes. Cook for about 30 minutes.

Add the chopped parsley and plenty of black pepper and serve.

What to drink: Personally I'd go for a stout like the wonderful Gibney's stout I wrote about the other day but a glass of cider wouldn't go amiss either. And Irish food and wine writer Tom Doorley suggests a riesling kabinett which sounds spot on too.

Extracted from The Irish Cook Book by J P McMahon published by Phaidon at £35.