Wholesome Winter Food.

The last weekend was a bit of a washout, what with all the rain. But it called for comfortable home cooked food; thick and creamy and wrapping you up with warm meals. We started the weekend with a very British wholesome dinner; bangers and mash. But posher than it sounds. We used some Holland and Barratt sausages which were fairly cheap, and with super 80s hand-drawn packaging. Classy. We made red wine onion gravy, which was amazing. And some creamy garlic mashed potato. We slow fried some onions to sneak under the sausages too.



When I was younger my Grandma made the best mashed potato. Seriously.
It's the only mashed potato which I could eat by the spoonful. Usually I have to pile my fork with other food, and never manage more than a spoonful with my whole dinner. Grandma's was different. Delicious.
So we set about re-creating a super creamy garlic mashed potato. With cream. And roasted garlic.

20 cloves of garlic (yep)
2 pounds of potatoes
1/2 cup cream
4oz butter

1/ Toss the garlic into a pan and heat with a lid on over a low heat. Toss occasionally for twenty minutes. Remove from the heat and leave covered for another twenty minutes. Remove and peel them, chop the woody ends off.

2/ Cube the potatoes into 1" chunks and boil for around ten minutes, until soft. Heat the cream gently in a microwave, until just warm- around twenty seconds.

3/ Drain potatoes and mash until smooth. Toss in the garlic, add cubes of the butter gradually and stir in the cream. Season to taste and keep mashing until it's your perfect consistency.


Now for the gravy:

1 tbsp oil
2 tsp butter
2 red onions
2 cloves garlic
4 tsp plain flour
600ml stock
250ml red wine/ cooking wine
2 tbsp parsley
2 tsp sage

1/ Heat a frying pan on a medium heat. Add oil and butter. Add onions and garlic. Fry gently for fifteen minutes.

2/ Stir in flour. Gradually add the stock and keep stirring. Add wine and continue stirring.

3/ Add herbs and simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste.


To finish this perfect dinner I made a beautiful white chocolate torte, the recipe can be found at Lustrous Musings.



This was brilliantly easy to make, with only four ingredients, and I cannot wait to start developing it and adding more flavours! I think next will be banoffee, and then after that experimenting with different toppings, like a layer of raspberries to make it more like a cheesecake. The great thing about this recipe is that it doesn't taste 'vegan' at all; non- vegans tried it and couldn't tell that it was made without dairy. Delicious.