Building a better bangers and mash

Marriage is about compromise, and here's a dinner-time deal I brokered between the carnivorous cravings of my British-born husband and my preferences for French and Italian flavours.

It's a simple dish of bangers and mash with a twist: oven-roasted pork sausages, an upmarket 'gravy' and a silken potato purée.

The result is garlicky, boozy, earthy and rich. Stodgy comfort food for him, elegant continental flavour for her.

This is what you get when a meat-and-potatoes boy meets a Mediterranean-loving girl: and wants something to eat with a bottle of red.


The mash takes as its inspiration the French treatment of potatoes called aligot - a supple, elastic puree enriched with white cheese. In France it is made with a tangy fresh cheese called la tomme fraiche de Cantal.

Stephanie Alexander, in her sumptuous Cooking and Travelling in South-West France, suggests substituting buffalo mozzarella to give it the requisite stretchy texture; I experimented with bocconcini balls because, frankly, I couldn't justify the expense when it's going to be absorbed into a mash. Other options would include the French cheese (and thereby, more authentic) Boursin, Italian stracchino or even Lancashire. To give the aligot the sort of tang you don't get from mozzarella or bocconcini, add sour cream.

I call the wine-dark juice a 'gravy' in deference to my husband and his Pavlovian response to a sausage supper, but in truth it bears little resemblance to the traditional salty brown goop from the British Isles. The desirous effect is an elegant pooling in the mash - but not in quantity or so strongly flavoured that it competes with it. Use juniper berries (which give flavour, and the name, to gin) and a splodge of Dijon mustard to lift gravy from its humble origins and lend it some joie de vivre.

Here's the recipe for a wine-friendly dinner, and, perhaps, conjugal bliss.

For 2 serves:
Good, herby Italian pork sausages, 2 or 3 each
4 potatoes (use a variety suitable for mashing, such as pontiac)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into thirds
2 thumb-sized knobs of butter
½ cup of sour cream
15 bocconcini balls, finely sliced (or one round of Boursin)
Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

Gravy/jus
2 shallots
Knob of butter
Wineglass of red wine: whatever you'll be drinking later on (cabernet goes well, as does merlot, although it stains the gravy purple!)
Cup of beef stock, or water and ½ a beef stock cube
Dozen juniper berries
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Put the whole potatoes and garlic into a pot of salted water and bring to the boil, then turn down the heat to keep the water at a simmer. Cook the potatoes with the skin left on; the skin, apart from holding much of the nutrients just under its surface, keeps them from becoming too water-laden.

Place sausages on a foil-lined baking tray, put in the oven and set the timer to 40 minutes. The foil will brown and crisp the sausages from below, thereby saving you from having to turn them halfway through cooking - giving you uninterrupted wine-time.

As the sausages and potatoes cook, make the gravy: Begin by finely dicing the shallots into lavender-coloured shards. Soften them in butter over low heat, stirring occasionally so they don't burn, for about 10 minutes. Add a glug of red wine, a cupful of beef stock (I use water and half a stock cube) and around 10 juniper berries, crushed beneath the flat of a knife. Stir as it comes to the boil. Once half of the liquid has been cooked off, season with a little Dijon mustard and turn the heat down to let it bubble away and thicken - taking care not to let it boil otherwise the mustard will turn bitter.

Complete the mash once the sausages and gravy are more or less ready. Once the potatoes are quite tender, dump them into a strainer to remove the skins: chances are the skin is hanging off in flaps already. Return to the pot with the garlic and mash them as well as you can; alternatively you can pass them through a food mill. The French prefer their mash to be quite silken - more of a purée.

Over a low heat, stir in the butter, small pieces at a time until absorbed, then add the cheese and blend in thoroughly. It should melt and create an elastic puree. Stir in the sour cream until quite smooth. Add salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste.

Serve immediately by splodging the mash onto a plate alongside the sausages and spooning the gravy over the top. Or do as my husband does and build a hollowed-out fort with high walls against which the gravy banks, the sausages partly submerged.

Coq au vin? Beef bourgignon? Veal and tomato ragu? Soul food, all. What are your favourite ways to cook with wine?


This post originally appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.