Sausages with roast peppers, tomatoes & chickpeas

Here’s one of my oldest, and easiest, recipes. A firm favorite during my student years.

It’s simple, tasty, quick and can be scaled up for large numbers no problem.

Just put it all in the middle of the table and let people dig-in.

Ingredients (with bread and salad this will serve 3 – 4):

o 8 decent sausages (Merguez are perfect, but any herby or spicy sausage is good, soft/uncooked Chorizo works really well too)
o 1 large onion
o 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika (substitute cayenne pepper, dried or fresh red chilli if you like)
o 3 cloves of garlic
o 2 - 3 large roasted red peppers or 5 or 6 smaller pointy ones – roast your own by blackening them on the hob / under the grill (see pic) and then skinning, or buy a jar of ready-roasted ones


o 1 tin of good quality chickpeas
o 2 tins of good quality chopped tomatoes, or a big jar of passata
o A pinch of sugar, salt and pepper
o A little olive oil
o 1 bunch of fresh parsley or coriander

Method:

You’ll need a small to medium sized baking or oven-proof dish. Put the oven on to preheat (to about 200 degrees C).

Slice the onion and finely chop the garlic, take a pan and start to fry them in a splash of olive oil on a medium heat. After about 5 minutes they should be nicely soft, so add the paprika or chilli and, if you have them, throw in a bay leaf and few parsley stalks now too.

Cook for 2 more minutes then add the tinned tomatoes and pinch of sugar along with some salt and pepper to taste. Bring up to the bubble and then chuck in to your oven proof dish.

Take your roasted red peppers, whether bought or homemade, and tear them in to large pieces, chuck them into the oven dish along with the chickpeas (drained of their water).

Slice the sausages in half at an angle and place them on top of the oven dish mix pushing ‘em down into the sauce a bit.

Place the dish on the top self of the oven for about 30 mins, or until the sausages are totally cooked with some nice color on top.

Remove from the oven, chop up the fresh herbs and scatter over the top.

Great with bread, salad and red wine.











N.B you can vary this in lots of different ways, such as:

o Using beans instead of chickpeas - butter or cannelloni are great.

o An Italian version - by removing the paprika and using fresh Italian sausages and finishing with basil instead of coriander. Perhaps even dot around torn pieces of mozzarella when there’s 10 mins more cooking to go.

o Or Moroccan style - by using the Merguez sausages, chickpeas, using cumin and normal paprika as the spices, cracking whole eggs in to the sauce (as above when there’s 10 mins more cooking to go) and finishing it with coriander.