Sausage and Mushroom Roast With stilton stuffed potatoes

600g medium new, or waxy potatoes, scrubbed
sea salt and black pepper
extra virgin olive oil
75g stilton
8 pork sausages
5 bay leaves
a handful of thyme sprigs
8 portobello, or other flat capped mushrooms, stalks trimmed
25g unsalted butter
Flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped.

The potatoes should be roasted and stuffed in advance, and then reheated. Set the oven to 200c and bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Add the potatoes to the pan and cook for 8 min, then drain them into a colander. Tip them into a roasting dish that holds them snugly, drizzle over with a little olive oil, season with salt and bake for 40-45 min, until lightly golden. Remove and leave to cool.
Cut a slit in each potato, to within 1cm of the ends, and fill with a sliver of cheese.
Heat oven to 200, arrange the sausages in a large roasting dish and then cook in the oven for 20 min.
Take out of the oven, turn the sausages and place the bay thyme and mushrooms in between them. Drizzle over some olive oil, season and pop a sliver of butter into each mushroom cup. Return to the oven for another 25 min, adding the potatoes and reheating for the last 10 minutes. Serve scattered with the parsley.

So I found my good local butcher. It took me a while to find him because I only recently started driving, then last week a friend (same one that told me about rivernene , if your reading this, thank you!) told me about this place. They butcher their own meat from what I understand, and every Wednesday they make a whole selection of specialty sausages. How cool is that?

It’s totally worth finding a good butcher. The quality of the meat is so much better, and it will probably be locally sourced (reducing the food miles), and they can answer all kinds of questions for you. I’m very fond of them already.

I made this recipe from The Country Cook, for two reasons. Firstly, there is the fact that this cookbook rocks. It’s so good I just can’t get enough of it right now. Secondly, I love sausages, but don’t know too many different things you can do with them. I liked the look of this because it is pretty simple, very different, and totally tasty looking.

It did not disappoint. This was so good I can’t believe it. My oldest son even ate the mushrooms, and he has never eaten a mushroom in his life. I could go on and on about this one, it just has to be tried. If you are pressed for time making it, it would be pretty easy to cook the potatoes in advance (I bet you could do it the night before). Then it’s really just; throw some stuff in, wait, throw some more stuff in, wait, throw in the last bit. Super easy.

I didn't use Portobellos, just big regular mushrooms, and they were still amazing. The stilton was actually pretty subtle. That was surprising.

This was a real crowd pleaser!