The best mash ever...

Ok, so this is a high accolade right there!  I feel slightly nervous with so much of the book yet to cook but the recipe for Cumberland Sausage with a Shallot and Cheddar Roast Potato is amazing.  The recipe and picture is on pages 151 - 153:

As you may have seen from my previous blog I am used to cooking for the 5,000 and thanks to my butcher, he made me up three cumberland sausage rings, after guests kept getting added to what I thought would be a fairly cosy family dinner.  

Aside from the sausage rings which I advise you get from a butcher, all the other ingredients are easy to come by.  Now, we all know that potato, onion and cheese are a holy trinity.  Think the lovely tartiflette previously cooked in this blog.  However, the trick to this mash and what makes it really special is that you roast the potatoes first.  Weird right?!

The whole lot gets roasted altogether and if you were catering for a smaller party, it would be easy on the washing up.  Once cooked you separate the two.  Technically, you are meant to keep the shallots with the sausage but mine caramelised and blended themselves with the mash and I thought it nigh on impossible to separate. On the basis you eventually add the shallots back to the potatoes, I quietly cut this corner:

The beauty of the roasting of the spud and the mingling with the shallots is you get the wonderful caramelised flavour with the fluffiness of the inside of a roast spud! I served the sausages on boards.  Unfortunately as I had three, it did look something a dog would produce...

JanieCooksNigel

20/5/16