Now that the weather is getting colder, it’s time to get thinking on some new cozy recipes to melt the icicles off our nose and ears when we get in from those long days at work. Being in an events based job, I usually get home around 9pm each evening, so I want something I can get ready fast. A great one for this is Sausage Casserole! It’s incredibly simple, you can cook it in bulk at the weekend and freeze off portions (also a great money saving trick) and I promise it’s just as good reheated as it is when you’ve just cooked it.

If there’s two things I find comforting, it’s sausage casserole and spicy lamb. After a little inspiration from watching Levi Roots make his Pepperpot, I came up with for a recipe for a lamb sausage casserole that will never fail to warm you up!

Ingredients
6 lamb sausages (I bought these from The Ginger Pig at Borough Market yesterday, and I honestly regret not getting 10! So if you want more, DO IT!)
One bunch of spring onions
5 cloves of garlic
2 Scotch Bonnet chillies
A rainbow of peppers- 2 red, 1 yellow and 1 green!
Half a white cabbage
2 sweet potatoes
1 big yam (you’ll really only need half)
Spiced Rum
Ginger beer
Two tins of tomatoes
Lamb stock cube
Salt, Pepper, Paprika

So here’s what you do…
1. Heat a little olive oil on medium high heat in a very large sauce pan.

2. Chop up the spring onions into big chunky pieces- we want to keep this meal as lumpy and chunky as possible! Dice up the garlic, about a table spoon of fresh ginger, and your two scotch bonnets.

3. Cut your beautiful lamb sausages in half and then throw them in the pan. Cook until they’re nice and browned, then add your springoniongarlicgingerchilli family.

4. While your sping onions are becoming a sweet kind of brown, open your two tins of tomatoes and pour them into a food processor (you want them smooth as possible!) with a lamb stock cube. KEEP A HOLD OF YOUR TINS! Blitz up the toms and stock.

5. Take one of your tomato tins and half fill it with ginger beer. Whirl is around to get as much of the left over tomato juices as possible then pour it into the other tin. Then, pour it into the pan. Mix this up for about 10 minutes, then add your smooth tomato stock mix.

6. In the food processor, we’re going to do the same trick as before to get all the left over tomato juices, except this time more of a cocktail! Pour 50ml spiced rum and about half a pint of ginger beer. Mix this up a little (just to get the stuff off the sides) then let it sit for a bit.

7. Check on your casserole so far and give it a little move. Now, peel your yam and sweet potatoes, and chop them into big chunks! Add them to the pan, then pour you rum and ginger beer over the top. Cover the pan.

8. Dice up your rainbow peppers into big happy squares and chuck them in.

9. Don’t ask me what it is, but a sausage casserole just isn’t a sausage casserole without streamers of white cabbage! Slice up half your cabbage and chuck it in. Stir everything in, then cover and leave it to simmer for about 20 minutes. The yams, potatoes and cabbage are going to soak up all the juicy flavours from the lamb, peppers, onion, garlic, ginger and rum. Fantastic!

10. Season with salt, pepper and paprika to taste, then serve and enjoy. For the rest, you can buy very useful freezer bags from any super market, so measure out the portion that is right for you into those, then freeze it. Then you can just get it out the freezer before you go to work in the morning, and when you get home all you need to do is pop it on the hob for 5 minutes!