Alternative Bangers and Mash

I had spicy pork sausages from Waitrose, but I didn't want to bother with mash or gravy, I wanted instant gratification, so what did I choose?

Polenta of course! With lashings of butter and almost of cup of grated cheddar to give me buttery, cheesy hearty 'mash' with my spicy sausages. Honestly I don't know why I hadn't thought of using polenta as my mash alternative before.

I cut my sausages into thirds and pan fried them in a tiny tiny amount of oil. This made the outsides slightly charred and crispy and the insides cooked faster, it also meant no spitting hot juicies as they cooked in the pan. The spicy tomatoes and chilli in the sausage melted out onto the pan, so I drizzled a bit of that onto my polenta to act as a gravy. The pictures look like my polenta is swimming in the fat, but really I only put a tablespoon's worth! The polenta was almost waterproof, it didn't soak up the sauce so they ended up pooling around the bottom of the plate. 

I did think the dish was a bit heavy on the carb and protein and longed for some vegetables so I quickly steamed some remaining broccoli, topped it with butter and a few grinds of pepper to serve on the side. Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals eat your heart out, I prepared all this in no less than 20 minutes! I could have made a salad to go with this  instead but really it was the end of the week, so I had no fresh lettuce to hand. This perhaps isn't my healthiest dish to date, but it sure was delicious.

Ingredients
5 tbsps Polenta
Water
1 cup grated Cheddar
knob of Butter
1 head of Broccoli, florets removed
6 spicy Sausages, cut into thirds/bite sized pieces
cooking Oil
Salt & Pepper



Recipe
Heat 1 teaspoon oil in pan and add sausages. Shake pan to toss sausages every few minutes until sides are cooked. Do not use a wooden spoon otherwise the sausage meat will fall out of their skins.


Cook polenta to packet instructions. Once water has been absorbed, add butter and mix well. Then add cheddar and mix well until cheese has melted in.

Steam broccoli for 8-10 minutes. Pierce with fork to see if they're cooked through. Add butter, salt & pepper. Leave for a minute or so for butter to melt and toss lightly.

Assemble onto plate, use remaining spicy oil in pan to drizzle over sausages. Eat.